Published on Wednesday, the proposals by the EU’s executive European Commission also include assistance to Ukraine to help its farmers sow corn and sunflower seeds and tend to wheat.

Ukraine is a top global player in sunflower oil, with over 50 per cent of world trade, and holds significant shares for wheat, barley and maize, which has already led to surges in prices and concerns about shortages.

The EU executive stressed on Wednesday that there was no immediate threat to food security in the 27-nation bloc given it is a net exporter of cereals.

However, recognizing farmers will face higher fuel and feed prices, the EU will distribute 500 million euros to aid farmers hardest hit by the crisis, particularly if they are engaged in more environmentally friendly production.

The Brussels-based Commission will also let farmers temporarily grow crops on the almost six per cent of EU agricultural land that is set aside to boost biodiversity.

The Commission believes this, along with record Indian exports, will help cover some of the 20 million tonnes of wheat which Ukraine normally exports.

The Commission also proposed an emergency support program of 330 million euros to Ukraine, some of which is designed to help farmers.

Ukraine’s minister of agrarian policy and food, Roman Leshchenko, told EU lawmakers this week that his country normally exported 80 per cent of its agricultural and food production but was now limiting that to feed its own population.

He said most of Ukraine’s grain and harvest production used to be exported from sea ports, now destroyed or blocked, and that farmers were struggling with the spring sowing campaign amid shelling.

“We must do everything possible to avert a hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system,” he said.

Speaking to the chamber on Wednesday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen echoed Leshchenko’s call to free up Ukraine’s wheat sea exports.

“The consequences will be felt from Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia, to Africa and the Far East. I call on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to let those ships go. Otherwise he will not only be responsible for war but also for famine.”

Moscow says its “special military operation” is to disarm its neighbour. It denies targeting civilians and has said that Western sanctions on Russia are akin to a declaration of war.

— Reporting for Reuters by Philip Blenkinsop and Gabriela Baczynska.

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Officials say blooms from the Netherlands, which supplies much of Russia’s US$2.5 billion flower market, pose safety risks because they may be infected.

Critics say the “flower war” marks a new low in relations with the West and is Moscow’s retaliation for a Dutch investigation into the downing of a Malaysian airliner over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in July last year.

Whatever the reason, ordinary Russians, already struggling with unemployment and inflation, can expect higher flower prices in the next few weeks when demand soars as children returning to school traditionally give flowers to their teachers.

“These are freshly cut flowers from the Netherlands infected with western Californian flower thrips,” Russian agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor’s chief sanitary inspector, Yekaterina Salkova, explained as television showed workers burning boxes filled with roses.

Authorities are now considering a ban on flowers from the Netherlands, which sends up to five per cent of its flower sales to Russia.

“We just have to check every shipment of the flowers ourselves,” said the Russian agricultural watchdog’s spokesman, Alexei Alexeyenko.

“Politically motivated”

Relations between Russia and the Netherlands collapsed following the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Dutch investigators blame Moscow-backed separatists for shooting the airliner down with a Russian-made missile.

Russia denies involvement and blames Ukraine for the tragedy, which killed all 298 people on board. Most of the dead were Dutch.

Last month, Russia vetoed a resolution co-sponsored by the Netherlands to set up a U.N.-backed tribunal to prosecute the culprits.

“The Russians are searching for any reason not to let our flowers in. We know this is politically motivated,” said a spokesperson for a Dutch flower firm, who asked not to be named.

“No flowers will be sent to Russia until the situation changes. Our red line is that the flowers are inspected on Dutch soil rather than in Russia,” the person added.

Following the downing of the plane, the West imposed sanctions on Russia. Moscow retaliated by imposing a ban on most Western food imports, which backfired by spurring inflation.

Last week, Russian TV showed quantities of illegally imported European cheese being bulldozed while workers threw boxes of European bacon into an incinerator.

Russia insists the issue with Dutch flowers is that they contain bugs that the European Union does not recognise as dangerous.

“Cut flowers infected with these organisms pose a serious threat,” Rosselkhoznadzor said.

Robert Roodenburg of the Association of Wholesale Floricultural Products, who negotiates on behalf of Dutch producers, said Russia was heavily dependent on Dutch imports.

“As prices spike, we expect the Russians to initiate a solution to the problem,” he said. “At the moment, we don’t have the means to exterminate all the organisms that are unwanted by the Russians. We want to use biological, not toxic, means to eliminate these organisms and developing that technology will take time.”

VGB says Dutch flower exports to Russia were worth 107 million euros in the first half of 2015 but other estimates put the figure higher due to black market trades.

Russia mostly imports roses, chrysanthemums and tulips with foreign supplies accounting for more than 80 per cent of overall sales, one third of which come from the Netherlands.

Analysts think prices could jump by over 50 per cent if an import ban is imposed, although Russian growers and exporters in Kenya, Ecuador, Colombia and Israel could benefit.

— Valery Stepchenkov and Gabriela Baczynska report for Reuters from Moscow. Additional reporting for Reuters by Yoruk Bahceli in Amsterdam; writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov.

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Even some Kremlin allies are expressing shock at the idea of “food crematoria” while one orthodox priest has denounced the campaign, which officially began on Thursday, as insane and sinful. However, the authorities are determined to press on with destroying illegal imports they consider “a security threat.”

Russian TV showed a small mountain of illegally imported European cheese being bulldozed on Thursday while even before the official start, zealous workers threw boxes of European bacon into an incinerator.

Moscow banned many Western food imports last year in retaliation for sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and other of their allies during the confrontation over Ukraine. But now many Russians say the government has lost sight of the everyday struggles faced by ordinary citizens.

More than 267,000 people have backed an online petition on Change.org, an international website that hosts campaigns, calling on President Vladimir Putin to revoke the decision and hand the food to people in need.

“Sanctions have led to a major growth in food prices on Russian shelves. Russian pensioners, veterans, large families, the disabled and other needy social groups were forced to greatly restrict their diets, right up to starvation,” it says. “If you can just eat these products, why destroy it?”

With annual food price inflation running at over 20 per cent, public indignation has been deepened by Russian media reports that the agriculture ministry was tendering to buy “mobile food crematoria” to speed up the destruction. Agriculture minister Alexander Tkachev declined to comment on Wednesday.

Putin’s decree ordering the food to be destroyed entered into force on Thursday. It does not specify methods but says the process should be carried out “by any available means” and videotaped, apparently to prevent corrupt officials from simply helping themselves and holding a feast.

How much food has evaded the embargo is unclear, but considerable quantities appear to have slipped through the net by various routes, including via Belarus.

The ban, currently in place until Aug. 5, 2016, covers a wide range of imports including pork, beef, poultry, fish and seafood, milk and dairy products, fruits, vegetables and nuts. It applies to food from Canada, the U.S., EU, Australia and Norway.

Notwithstanding the petition, no one starves in modern Russia, unlike in the Soviet era when countless millions perished between the 1920s and 1940s from hunger and related disease in both peace time and the Second World War.

After the fall of Communism, Russians developed a strong appetite in the 1990s for Western food imports from cheap U.S. chicken quarters to fine French cheeses for the newly wealthy.

Now the soaring food prices are hurting the poor at a time when the economy is in crisis due to the effects of the sanctions and a steep fall in the price of oil, Russia’s main export. The rouble has lost more than 40 per cent of its value against the dollar and overall inflation is above 15 per cent.

The Rosstat statistics agency says the number of Russians living below the poverty line — defined as those earning less than 10,400 roubles (C$212) a month — has jumped. In the first quarter this year, the total hit 23 million, or 16 per cent of the population, up from more than 16 million people, or 11 per cent of Russians last year.

Opposition figure and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov responded with bitter irony. “20 million Russian citizens are below poverty line. Their president ordered food products destruction from Aug. 6. Some real triumph of humanism,” Kasyanov said on Twitter.

But even some government allies are critical. “I don’t understand how food can be destroyed in a country that lived through the horrible hunger during the war and tough years that followed,” said a prominent pro-Kremlin TV anchor, Vladimir Solovyov.

“Insane and stupid”

Authorities in several regions have already got to work on what they said were illegal imports.

“Any product without documents poses a security threat and should be destroyed,” said Andrei Panchenko, the head of the agricultural watchdog in the Belgorod region, as workers threw the boxes of bacon into a stove.

Officials say the embargo will encourage Russian producers to fill the gap. Now the authorities are also proposing to limit imports of X-ray machines and defibrillators for hospitals, which are already complaining of poor equipment. Even condoms could make it to the list of restricted imports.

One priest from the Russian Orthodox Church, which enjoys close ties with the Kremlin, expressed his anger.

“My grandmother always told me that throwing away food is a sin,” the cleric, Alexey Uminsky, was quoted by the website Orthodoxy and the World as saying. “This idea is insane, stupid and vile.”

“Such an idea can only appear with a man who has been in no need for anything in recent decades and is ready to do something like that for populism and quasi-patriotism,” he added.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov offered little hope of a change of heart and said on Thursday the situation should be not blown out of proportion.

“The primary goal is to stop the contraband… Second, to protect economic interests of the country hurt by the contraband. Third, and in fact the most important thing, is safeguarding the health of citizens,” he told reporters.

While Peskov said the Kremlin was keeping an eye on the Change.org petition, he said banned food was arriving without necessary certificates and could therefore pose health risks.

But the Kremlin has hit a raw nerve with many Russians.

“To destroy food with this standard of living is a crime against one’s own nation!” wrote a backer of the petition who gave her name on the website as Natalya Afanasieva. “Come to your senses, Mr. President, finally take at least some pity on your people!”

— Gabriela Baczynska reports for Reuters from Moscow.

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