On Wednesday, Russian president Vladimir Putin unveiled his dastardly plan to get back at Western nations for imposing harsher sanctions over his support of rebels in Ukraine, declaring that imports from those countries will be banned for a year. It was initially reported that all foods from the United States would be banned, as well as all fruits and vegetables from Europe, but on Thursday Russia’s food-safety watchdog said the list hasn’t been finalized. Russia is the biggest buyer of E.U. fruits and vegetables, and the second biggest buyer of U.S. poultry, but regardless of what ends up on the list, the ban is expected to hurt Russian consumers more than foreign suppliers. If Putin really wanted to teach us a lesson, he’d just require Russians to call American cheese “anti-freedom cheese.”
