New Eastern Europe: Is Russia’s trade war Ukraine’s golden ticket to the EU?

Published Aug. 22, 2013 at 7:27 am

If Russia places an embargo on your country’s most popular edible exports, chances are the Kremlin is none too pleased with you. Moscow’s most recent political collateral is Ukrainian chocolate, banned from the Russian market July 29th. This week, Russia stopped importing Ukrainian goods almost entirely.

After claiming to find traces of the carcinogen benzopyrene in Ukrainian sweets, Russia’s consumer standards agency, Rospotrebnadzor, stopped the import of chocolates from Ukraine’s infamous Roshen company, which garners about 40 million US dollars in profit from the Russian market per year. The confectioner’s other top markets – Moldova, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus – continued to import the chocolate, however, as they found no evidence of carcinogens.