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Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

The source for this is Russia state owned media. I imagine this is a Ukrainian chocolate situation. When Russia gets pissed at someone they attack a trade relationship that hurts that country. Suddenly, Ukrainian chocolate is unsafe. Suddenly, American adoptive parents are unsafe and morally dubious for Russia adoptions.

I wonder who makes these irons and if this is the beginning of a larger smear operation.

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I've not heard about the Ukrainian chocolate war before (have now googled and read about it, oddly enough in Russia Today), but I've read about and seen the Georgian and Moldovan wine ban in action. Pretty brutal for such small countries to be honest. Luckily the best Georgian + Moldovan wine will get exported to the EU anyway, but for your average winery times must get tough.

I'm not so sure EU wants to import wine anyway. They have their own of the best quality in any quantities

The EU imports massive amounts of wine from all over, so yes, Russia might just turn out to hurt their own interests with that ban, as it's quite possible Georgia and Moldova will simply find other markets and get less dependent on Russian trade.

Exactly. Few weeks ago Russia has banned all milk products from Lithuania. Official reason was low quality, but that's simply funny as the same products are exported to EU countries, that generally have higher quality standards. More likely was unofficial reason: revenge for problems caused to Gazprom. So yes, it is a common practice for Russia to imply import bans as a political reasoning.

The milk thing has another possible/likely reason: Lithuania holds the EU presidency at the moment, and will host a summit that amongst others will involve free trade agreements with Ukraine, as well as initiate talks with Moldova and Georgia about further cooperation. Russia has made it very clear they take a dim view of more ex-Soviet states coming under EU influence, in part because they want their own customs union and closer integration with these countries.

Granted, the source is not known for reliability, but than everyone laughed their asses of when discussing fake stone used by British in Moscow spy scandal. Until British admitted something like 5 years later ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/19/fake-rock-spy-r... ).

So I'll file it under "curious, possible, but so far dubious".

The horrifying part of this behaviour of using conspiracy theories and blaming external enemies, is that it is so like the world's worst dicatorships, in e.g. the Middle East. Where will this end? :-(

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