Russia's political war on imported food, flowers — and wine. Meanwhile Putin crony found on lavish yacht.

The World
A street vendor sells flowers and vegetables on the roadside outside Moscow, Russia.

It comes in a bottle and can spark a small political firestorm in Russia — but it's not a Molotov cocktail.

It's wine.

Specifically, three brands of wine imported from California, at a time when many Western countries have imposed sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine.

The wines are just a few of many products that Russian regulators have recently pulled out of circulation. Others include Dutch flowers that were recently burned by authorities, and European cheeses that were literally bulldozed into the ground.

Russian authorities claimed these moves were in the interests of public health. They said the wine included traces of plastic and pesticides. The Dutch flowers were allegedly ridden with insects, while the cheeses were described as "contraband."

But doubts have surfaced because of the seeming tit-for-tat nature of these moves.

"The body that's governing the rules of imports has been used widely as a political tool," says Anton Moiseenko, who writes about wine for his website Wine Report Russia.

The destruction of the flowers has coincided with milestones in the Dutch-led investigation into the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine last summer. All 298 people on board the flight — most of them from the Netherlands — where killed.

Russia gets an estimated 40 percent of all fresh-cut flowers and houseplants from the Dutch — worth about a $314 million. The whole episode is now being referred to as the flower war.

Moiseenko, the wine writer, isn't so sure that the wine bans were politically motivated. He points out that Russia could simply ban all wines imported from the US, if it wanted to retaliate aggressively.

But he adds: “Maybe it’s just a drop in the ocean — that they would like to remind the United States from time to time that Russia has the power to stop all food imports from the country.”

Between the flowers and the destruction of European imports, some are calling foul after Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny posted a blog showing Putin's presidential spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, sailing off Sardinia on his honeymoon on the uber-expensive Maltese Falcon. (You'll remember Peskov for his $620K watch.)

A week on the yacht costs about $425,000, making it the world’s second-most expensive luxury sailboat. All told, Peskov appears to be living larger than his government salary.

Max Seddon at Buzzfeed writes that Navalny further demonstrated Peskov's whereabouts on the boat after finding an Instagram picture posted by the daughter of Peskov's wife wearing a Maltese Falcon-branded bathrobe along with (now deleted) posts geotagged to Sardinia — where the newlyweds were spending their honeymoon.

One can't say for sure, but it's not hard to imagine EU cheeses and fruit aboard. Maybe even Dutch flowers and California wine.

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