Outrage as Russia destroys tons of cheese and smuggled Western food

Authorities in Russia are stepping up their crackdown on smugglers trying to get round a ban on importing western food. Several tons of foreign cheese has been destroyed because of an embargo brought in last year in retaliation for western sanctions. President Putin last week signed a decree ordering the destruction of the food which ranges from gourmet cheese to fruit and vegetables. The cheese was transported from Ukraine but officials said it was most likely to have been produced in the EU.

It is a worldwide practice that if you break the law, if it is smuggled goods, they have to be destroyed.

Russia’s Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev

But the government has been criticised for wasting food as sanctions have created an economic crisis and millions more Russians are now living in poverty. Business paper Vedomosti Daily in a front-page editorial said: “This is no ordinary measure. This is a display of barbarity, a challenge to society, a refusal to see the ethical side, where it is most important.” And Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who is usually a supporter of Mr Putin, declared the move “extreme” and proposed sending the food to orphanages and to the separatist pro-Russian regions of eastern Ukraine.

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