You're reading: Russia banning shipments of soy, soybean meal, sunflower, grits from Ukraine Aug 1

Russia is banning shipments of soy, soybean meal, sunflower and corn grits from Ukraine starting August 1, Alexander Isayev, the head of Russian agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor's phytosanitary supervision department, told Interfax.

Isayev said this was connected with multiple violations to Russian phytosanitary requirements. This above all concerns shipments with seeds of quarantined weeds, he noted.

“We have expressed concern numerous times on the fact that quarantined weeds were discovered in this product. We warned that restrictive measures could follow [and] welcomed telephone negotiations, but there was no response from our Ukrainian colleagues. Moreover, they themselves provided a special email address for correspondence, but they did not answer our emails,” Isayev said.

For that reason, Rosselkhoznadzor was forced to ban shipments of the products in order to protect Russia from harmful plants, he added.

Isayev said he was not ruling out the possibility that the ban could also affect onion shipments. “Just yesterday we prepared a notification concerning an onion consignment from Ukraine – golden potato cyst nematode was discovered. This is thus far the only incident. If there are more, we can also restrict [these] shipments,” he said.