Russian officials today steamrollered tonnes of cheese as they began a controversial drive to destroy Western food smuggled into the crisis-hit country despite a public outcry.
President Vladimir Putin last week signed a decree ordering the trashing of all food -- from gourmet cheeses to fruit and vegetables -- that breaches a year-old embargo on Western imports imposed in retaliation to sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.
Russian television showed officials dumping truckloads of round bright orange cheeses on a patch of wasteland and then driving over them with a steamroller in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.
The cheeses arrived from Ukraine in unmarked boxes, but "were most likely produced in the European Union," a reporter said.
A spokeswoman for the food safety agency Rosselkhoznadzor said that the flattened cheese -- amounting to almost 9 tonnes -- would be buried underground.
"From today, agricultural produce, raw products and foods, which come from a country that has decided to impose economic sanctions on Russian legal entities or individuals ... And which are banned from import into Russia, are due to be destroyed," the agriculture ministry said in a statement.
Moscow last year banned a slew of food products from the West, ranging from delicacies such as Parmesan, pate and Spanish hams and to staples such as apples.
Russia complains that some importers are circumventing the ban by illegally slapping on new labels that claim the food was produced in neighbouring ex-Soviet countries.
The food safety agency has said it planned to destroy several hundred tonnes of contraband produce on Thursday that has already been seized.
Two truckloads of European tomatoes and three of nectarines and peaches were being smashed with a tractor and bulldozer in the Smolensk region after they arrived with fake documents, the food safety agency said.
One truck driver carrying a cargo of suspicious tomatoes turned his vehicle around and made a getaway back into Belarus to avoid them being destroyed, Rosselkhoznadzor said.
A source in the food safety agency warned that officials who opted to "destroy" gourmet delicacies by eating them would face criminal charges, pro-Kremlin Izvestia daily reported.
