Russia on Tuesday said it’s officially banning imports of salt from the United States and its allies, adding it to its list of embargoed food products.
The Kremlin said in a statement that western salt imports will be banned in Russia effective Nov. 1 when sodium chloride is added to an embargo list that already includes fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, milk and dairy.
The boycott applies to products exported out of the U.S., the EU, Albania, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Ukraine and Montenegro, and isn’t limited to just table salt, either. The decree will officially ban the import of pure sodium chloride and dissolved and undissolved salt, including seawater.
Moscow’s embargo list was first adopted in August 2014 in response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. President Obama authorized the extension of those sanctions this past March, and the EU voted on Sept. 7 to keep anti-Russian measures of its own in place for another six months, triggering Tuesday’s salt ban announcement.
Food prices in Russia have surged by around 31 percent over the last two years due to western sanctions, The Moscow Times reported Tuesday citing official government statistics.
Ukraine was responsible for roughly half of Russia’s salt imports in 2015, the Kremlin-owned Sputnik news agency reported Tuesday. Russia’s RIA Novosti newswire cited a representative with the ROIF Expert marketing agency as predicting the salt ban will lead to an increase in prices for Russian producers and consumers amounting to less than 2 percent.
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