Russia does not share Moldova’s optimism about restarting Moldovan wines imports

The meeting in Moscow and the results of the discussion of the presidents of Moldova and the Russian Federation inspired the Moldovan wine exporters with optimism regarding the end of „the wine war” and re-starting the export of Moldovan wine goods to the Russian market. The chairman of the Union of Moldovan Wine Exporters, Gheorghe Cozub, said that the winemakers hope that the embargo applied by Russia to Moldovan wine imports will cease soon. But Cozub avoided making any statement regarding the future of the plan of Moldovan experts, presented a month ago for discussions to the „Rospotrebnadzor” Service. The President’s advisor, Marc Tcaciuc, also showed to be optimistic about the positive evolution of the „wine issue”, in an interview to the „RIA-Novosti” Agency, mentioning: „We are also optimistic regarding the fact that Russians will very soon start to drink again the new Moldovan wine”. On the other hand, Russian press says that re-establishing the Moldovan wine goods on the Russian market is rather difficult. Starting March 27, when Moldovan wines export was ceased, the Russian importers redirected themselves towards other suppliers and do not hurry to come back to those of Moldova. Beside this, as certain surveys show, almost 72% of the population of the Russian Federation supports the decision of ceasing the wine imports from Moldova and Georgia. These data were made public by the Russian Public Opinion Center, and the questionnaire included 46 regions of Russia. As result of the embargo applied by Russia to Moldovan wine imports, the Moldovan importers lost about 123 million dollars. Within this period, a volume of 1.2 million liters of wine goods from Moldova and Georgia were destroyed.