Russia looks to India for bananas and papaya after bitter spat with Ecuador

India has also expressed interest in supplying mangoes, pineapples, papaya and guava to the Russian market

The first batch of bananas from India has already been shipped to Russia

Russia has started buying bananas from India and will look for other fruit in a bitter spat with its biggest supplier Ecuador.

The decision was made after the South American country swapped Russian-made military hardware with the United States.

India, a major banana producer, has also expressed interest in supplying other fruit such as mangoes, pineapples, papaya and guava to the Russian market.

The first batch of bananas from India was shipped to Russia in January and the next is planned for end-February, Russian watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said, adding that “the volume of exports of Indian bananas to the Russian market will increase.”

Rosselkhoznadzor last week suspended banana imports from five Ecuadorian companies, saying it had detected pests in their products. Ecuador’s food safety agency said on Tuesday only 0.3% of banana shipments to Russia were found to contain insects and didn’t pose a risk, according to Ecuadorian media reports.

Ecuador President Daniel Noboa (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The suspensions came after Moscow condemned a pact under which Ecuador will hand over Russian-made military hardware, dubbed by Ecuador as “Ukrainian and Russian scrap metal,” to the United States in exchange for advanced U.S. equipment worth $200 million.

The United States has said the arms from Ecuador would help Ukraine bolster its forces on the battlefield against Russia.

Russia’s trade ties with India have deepened since 2022, when Western countries imposed sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, forcing it to seek greater trade with China, India and other non-Western countries.

A fruit vendor carries bananas to sell at Daranggiri market in Goalpara district of India’s Assam stat (AFP via Getty Images)

Russian authorities have not explicitly linked the Indian banana import decision with the U.S.-Ecuador deal, but Moscow has a history of restricting food imports from countries with which it has disputes.

Russia was the largest importer of Ecuadorian bananas in 2022, and Ecuador supplied 20-25% of its yearly banana exports to Russia prior to the 2022 invasion, according to the FAO.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will discuss the war in Ukraine and the Black Sea Grain Initiative during a visit to Ankara by the Russian leader, Turkey’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.

Hakan Fidan did not give a date for the trip, which would mark Putin’s first trip to a NATO member state since Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A Turkish official told Reuters last week he would visit Turkey on Feb. 12.