Russia has lost a battle to exhibit a range of wines produced in the annexed Ukrainian territory of Crimea – the Ukrainian goods had been presented as Russian at the Vinitaly international wine exhibition, which is being held in Italy’s Verona on April 9-12.
The Russian stand at the exhibition had been showing wines of Crimean producers Inkerman, Massandra, Zolotaya Balka, Solnechnaya Dolina and the Yevpatorian Wine Plant, along with Russian wines. But after complaints, the Crimean wines were removed.
The removals were prompted by an appeal from Ukrainian representatives at the exhibition to the Embassy of Ukraine in Rome and Italy’s financial police, said Oleksii Lubetskyi, the chief executive officer of UA2EU, a company that helps Ukrainian producers enter the European market.
“This is a victory, and the result of joint efforts by (Ukrainian) people and the Embassy of Ukraine in Rome,” Lubetskyi said, “An enemy or anyone else intending to offend Ukrainians needs to remember they cannot get away with it.”
A photograph uploaded by Lubetskyi to his Facebook account shows a map of Russia’s wineries presented at the exhibition that includes Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which Russia invaded and annexed in March 2014, and its wineries.
Crimean wine has been banned from export to the European Union since July 2014 when the EU sanctioned nine Crimean businesses, including those that produce wine.
Mariana Betsa, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tweeted on April 10 that the Italian organizers of the wine exhibition had demanded that the Russian participants remove Crimean goods from their stand at the exhibition.
The decision to remove the wines angered some Russian officials. The Kremlin-installed Crimean leader Sergey Aksyonov told Russian news agency TASS that he had no clue why such a decision was taken, and that Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is now actively “tackling this case.”
“I don’t know the reason behind such decision, but it seems like an act of absolute stupidity,” Aksyonov said.
