Putin’s Bananas Ban Backfires as Russians Told to Grow Their Own Fruit

Russians have been told to grow their own bananas as a shortage looms, days after President Vladimir Putin issued a ban on imports from Ecuador, its largest supplier of the fruit, seemingly over an arms shipment spat.

Oleg Knyazkov, the head of the industry expertise center at Rosselkhoznadzor, the Russian consumer watchdog, told local news outlet Gazeta that he predicts there will be a nationwide shortage of bananas in a month. He advised Russians to start growing them domestically.

His comments come after Putin suspended banana imports from five Ecuadorian companies on February 2, saying the decision was made due to the detection of pests in shipments of the fruit. Weeks earlier, Quito accepted a U.S. offer to exchange Soviet-era military equipment for modern U.S. weapons in a deal worth $200 million.

The United States said that Ecuador’s Soviet-era equipment would be sent to Ukraine amid the ongoing war started by Russia in February 2022.

The move was blasted by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who said Ecuador had made a “reckless decision under serious pressure from external interested parties.”

“If we were talking about ‘scrap metal,’ as it is called in Ecuador, it is unlikely that Washington would offer modern equipment in exchange, and for a rather impressive amount,” she said.

Russia imports 90 percent of its bananas from Ecuador, local media reported. State-run news agency RIA Novosti reported that the ban could cause Ecuador to lose up to $754 million in a year.

Newsweek has contacted the Foreign Ministries of Russia and Ecuador for comment via email.

Knyazkov said the 1-month shortage timeline was due to the fact that some shipments from Ecuador sent prior to the ban still haven’t reached Russian stores.

He said, however, that this will be a temporary shortage, as partial imports of bananas from India have already been established, but noted that there are still logistical difficulties.

Knyazkov said this temporary shortage could be compensated by growing bananas in Russia. He pointed to successful experiments on the acclimatization of tropical plants in the Krasnodar territory.

Newsweek previously found that shortages of items in Russia were causing price hikes nationwide.

In a rare apology by the Russian president, Putin said during his end-of-year press conference that insufficient imports and increased demand were to blame for hiked egg prices.

“I’m sorry about this problem. This is a setback in the government’s work,” Putin said on December 14. “I promise that the situation will be corrected in the near future.

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