Grain blockade: Russia and Kazakhstan on the brink of conflict
Russia has stopped the transit and import of grain, tomato, pepper and sunflower seeds from Kazakhstan due to phytosanitary reasons. According to some experts, Russia's ban on the import of Kazakh agricultural products may be a response to Kazakhstan's ban on Russian grain .
Russia has practically blocked the import and transit of Kazakh grain and other agricultural products from September 23, citing phytosanitary violations, TRT reports .
Rosselkhoznadzor said in a statement that its systems began automatically blocking the issuance of phytosanitary certificates for Kazakhstan's grain, tomato, pepper and sunflower seeds. These certificates are required to cross the border and their absence will make it impossible to pass .
The Russian side explained its decision by the increasing number of cases of detection of pests and pathogenic bacteria in Kazakh products. Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Kazakhstan Ermek Kenjekhanuli confirmed the receipt of the appeal from Rosselkhoznadzor, but noted that the Kazakh side has not received concrete evidence of violations.
" In our response letter, we asked Rosselkhoznadzor to provide us with supporting facts about the detected violations. We need this evidence to make sure that violations actually occurred . We asked for relevant reports on the identified laboratory tests and the results of these studies," said Kenjekh a nuli.
The ban imposed by Russia has caused a wave of discussion, especially in light of the fact that Kazakhstan had previously imposed a complete ban on the import of Russian wheat from August 21. This year, Kazakhstan expects to harvest a record 27.7 million tons of grain, of which about 9 million tons are intended for export. The import of Russian wheat is prohibited in order to protect the domestic market against the background of last year's reserves.
According to some experts, Russia's ban on the import of agricultural products from Kazakhstan may be a response to the ban imposed by Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan's grain producers have previously accused Russian exporters of illegally supplying grain to Kazakhstan for re-export to Central Asia and Afghanistan without paying Kazakh taxes. According to representatives of the grain processing industry , the illegal delivery of Russian grain has become a serious problem for Kazakhstan's economy.
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