Ukraine has imposed sanctions against state-owned Crimea-based agricultural companies and vineyards in line with decree No. 133 dated May 15 signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
According to a supplement to the decree, state companies that have re-registered under Russian law are subject to sanctions, including: Sevastopol Winery, the Crimean Agricultural Institute and its research fields, Magarach, the Sevastopol Geodesy Center, the Crimean Board of Geodesy, Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, Crimean Fish Farm, Pervomaisky Winery, Peredgorye State Farm, Agropromkombinat Vinogradny, Priberezhnaya Argo-industrial Firm, Novy Svet, Massandra, Livadiya, Tavrida, Gurzuf, Morskoye, Sudak, Malorechenskoye, Alushta and others.
Sanctions have been imposed for one year for the companies listed and involve the freezing of assets, a temporary restriction of the right to use property, restriction of trading operations, prohibition of moving capital outside of Ukraine, suspension of fulfillment of economic and financial obligations, annulment or suspension of licenses and other authorizations, a ban on state purchase of goods, labor and services from companies that are residents of a foreign state.
The sanctions will not affect Massandra financially or economically, as the company has not been supplying wine to Ukraine for more than three years, its general director Yanina Pavlenko said.
“We’ve been on the European Union’s sanctions list for three years, yet we’ve been participating in all kinds of contests and exhibitions. We’ve been on the U.S. personal list for 18 months and today we’re finally on the Ukrainian list. We marked this by launching production of the first champagne under the Massandra trademark,” she said.
“We don’t supply to Ukraine and haven’t done for three years, but we do supply wine to the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics,” Pavlenko said.
Massandra, Crimea’s biggest winemaker, has eight wine estates and owns 11,000 hectares of land, about 4,000 hectares of which are planted with vineyards. Crimea’s Council of Ministers transferred Massandra to the Russian president’s business affairs department in the fall of 2014. (Interfax-Ukraine/Business World Magazine)