Russia Lifts Suspension on Imports of Ecuadorian Bananas After Collapse of US-Ecuador Arms Deal

Another embarrassing setback for US foreign policy, this time in its so-called “back yard” (or as Biden calls it, “front yard”).

Well, that didn’t take long. Ecuador’s “Weapons or Bananas?” dilemma appears to be over, just weeks after it began, leaving mucho huevo on the face of both US and Ecuadorian government officials. On Friday (Feb 16), the Russian government announced it was lifting its ban on the imports of bananas from 5 Ecuadorian companies, which threatened to bankrupt many Ecuadorian banana growers. The Head of Russia’s  Federal Service of Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision (Rosselkhoznadzor), Sergey Dankvert said:

“We officially announce that at 4 pm Moscow time on Monday we will have a video-conference with Ecuador’s agricultural watchdog. Today, we announce that the five Ecuadoran companies will be able to continue supplying [the Russian market] on the conditions of guarantees of Ecuador’s service. We will discuss technical details later on.”

The reason for the change of course had nothing to do with bananas and everything to do with Russian weapons and the war in Ukraine.

On January 10, the President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, announced that his country would deliver unused Russian military machinery to the United States in exchange for $200 million of US-made weaponry for Quito’s escalating war on the drug cartels. The Russian weapons would then be sent to Ukraine for its defence, though this was strenuously denied by Noboa, who insisted the weapons were nothing more than worthless scrap metal.

Russian authorities declaimed that Noboa’s announcement violated the military treaty signed in 2008 that prevents buyers of Russian weapons from selling or donating them to other countries without Moscow’s prior authorisation. Moscow’s response was to place an import ban on five Ecuadorian banana exporters citing an alleged infestation of humpback flies in a shipment of bananas from the Andean nation.

A few days later, a total ban on the import of Ecuadorian carnations was also announced after other pests had been detected in the flowers. In addition, the Netherlands, Germany, Latvia and Lithuania were asked to block the entry of carnations from Ecuador. The Russian authorities warned the countries that if they did not restrict the entry of carnations, restrictive measures would be applied against other types of flowers coming from their territory.

Days later, other banana exporters were added to the ban. Russia was also talking about substituting Ecuadorian bananas, which account for nine out of ten bananas consumed in the country, with supplies of the yellow fruit from India, Egypt, China, Korea and Thailand. As I warned in my previous article on the topic, Russia’s retaliatory measures could be the final straw for Ecuador’s foundering economy, for which bananas are the third most important export product, after crude oil and crustaceans:

[Ecuador] is the world’s largest exporter of bananas and Russia is its second biggest customer after the European Union. “Russia is an extremely important market for our country’s banana producers and exporters,” said the Association of Banana Exporters of Ecuador (AEBE) in a press release:

“It is the final destination of 21% of all banana exports. 1.46 million crates [of the fruit] are sent weekly to Russia, meaning that this market generates around $757 million per year… In addition, 25,000 workers work across the nation on plantations dedicated to supplying this market, which is particularly important for small producers.”…

Ecuador’s banana growers are already hurting. As the Ecuadorian economist Pablo Dávalos notes, they are bearing the brunt of the fallout from Noboa’s decision to involve the country in the Ukraine conflict and there are no compensatory measures in place. At a recent rally, Fulto Serrano, a representative of Oro farmers group, said the sole cause of the problem was the government’s donation of Russian-made weapons. Noboa, he said, will not be affected by the closure of the Russian market, while thousands of farmers around the country will. The result will be a glut of bananas, leading to a collapse in the price.

U-Turn Time

Ecuador’s government has finally blinked, though some US media outlets, including Bloomberg, have been bizarrely making the opposite claim — that it was Russia that had reversed course following concerns in the Kremlin about a potential banana shortage in the coming months. As Putin said in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, “in the world of propaganda it is very difficult to beat the United States.”

On Friday afternoon, Ecuador’s Trade Minister Sonsoles García confirmed on X that the Russian embargo on five banana exporting companies had been lifted.

“Good news. 100% of Ecuadoran banana exports to Russia are operational! We will continue working to guarantee fluid trade with Russia, an important destination for our agro-export offer.”

Just days earlier, García had described the potential loss of Ecuador’s second biggest banana export market as “simply a challenge for banana growers and exporters to find new markets.”

Russia Reminds Ecuador of Its “Neutral Status”

The lifting of the import ban was announced following a meeting on Friday afternoon between Russia’s Ambassador to Ecuador, Vladimir Sprinchan, and Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa in Guayaquil. And the main reason cited by Sprinchan for lifting the ban was Ecuador’s decision to cancel its weapons swap with the US. From Pravda‘s Spanish language edition (translation my own):

Ecuador has reversed its decision to deliver Russian weapons to the United States, the Russian ambassador to the South American country Vladimir Sprinchan told Sputnik after his conversation with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa on February 16.

“This Friday, a meeting took place with the president of Ecuador Daniel Noboa, we spoke in detail about the current state of bilateral relations, focusing particularly on the complications that have recently arisen between our two countries,” reported the diplomat.

“The Ecuadorian side confirmed that the country, given its neutral status and permanent membership of the UN, cannot allow itself to be dragged into a conflict by any of the parties involved,” he added.

“Ecuador’s position consists of not sending weapons and ammunition to conflict zones and contributing to the resolution of disputes peacefully, through diplomatic measures,” he highlighted.

Russia’s Federal Ministry for Military-Technical Cooperation has repeatedly warned Ecuador that it is illegal for any buyer of Russian or Soviet-made military equipment to transfer said equipment to a third party without prior consent from Moscow. In a recent press conference, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, warned that if the weapons swap takes place, “Ecuador will be breaching its international obligations, which could have negative consequences for our future bilateral cooperation.”

The Ecuadorian investigative news portal La Posta laid the blame for this latest diplomatic fiasco on the US State Department’s shoulders for directly contradicting President Noboa’s [admittedly absurd] justification for handing the Russian-made weapons to the US in the first place — namely that they are essentially scrap metal and therefore not fit for battle. Zakharova tore Noboa’s alibi to shreds in just one sentence: 

“If [the weapons] were indeed scrap metal, as they call it in Ecuador, it would be hard to imagine Washington proposing to swap it all for modern equipment, for a not inconsiderable sum.”

Another Diplomatic Disaster

Just over a year ago, as Ukraine’s weapons shortages were rapidly intensifying, the US government began asking Latin American countries to donate Russian-made weapons for the Ukrainian war effort or to swap them for more modern US equipment. In a January 2023 interview with the Atlantic Council, General Laura Richardson, the commander of the US Southern Command, said:

There is a total of nine [countries] that have Russian [military] equipment in [the region] and we’re working to replace that Russian equipment with United States equipment if those countries want to donate it, too.

None of the nine countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela) showed any interest in the proposal, despite pressure from the United States and Germany. But that changed in January when Noboa, the son of Ecuador’s richest man, announced his decision to hand over Ecuador’s arsenal of Russian-made weaponry, which he described as worthless scrap metal, in exchange for $200 million of US-made equipment.

But then, Kevin Sullivan, a senior US State Department representative, directly contradicted Noboa’s “scrap metal” alibi by admitting on Ecuadorian television that Ecuador’s Russian-made weaponry would indeed be heading to Ukraine, where they would be used to try to kill Russian soldiers. And just like that, Noboa’s whole charade came tumbling down.

That was over a week ago. Now, the weapons are staying put in Ecuador. Ambassador Sprinchan said on Friday that he is “confident” Ecuador will not be sending Soviet weapons to Ukraine via the US, adding that the Andean nation “has a great responsibility and commitment to contribute to the resolution of conflicts in the world through peaceful means and diplomatic instruments.”

Initially, Ecuador’s government neither confirmed nor denied Moscow’s claims. Meanwhile, many Western press outlets were serving up a very different version of events in which the Kremlin lifted the import bans due to concerns over potential banana shortages and price rises. No mention was even made of the Russian ambassador’s statements in articles in Newsweek (“Putin’s Bananas Ban Backfires as Russians Told to Grow Their Own Fruit“), Bloomberg (“Russia Blinks on Banana Ban as Ecuador Swaps Weaponry With US“) and Moscow Times (Russia Lifts Ecuador Banana Ban After U.S. Arms Deal).

The article in Bloomberg even chalked up the reversal as a “foreign policy victory” for the Noboa government:

Ecuador, the world’s biggest banana exporter, solved the impasse “with little noise and quickly thanks to a capable career commerce team,” said Michel Levi, a professor of foreign relations at Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito…

With the end of the ban, President Daniel Noboa — a millennial heir to a banana fortune — chalked up a second foreign policy victory in a week after Ecuador’s national assembly ratified a free-trade agreement with Russia’s ally China.

In its defence, Bloomberg did report a day later (Feb 17) that Russia was claiming that Ecuador had agreed to cancel its weapons swap with the US, but this is still not reflected in the original article. Then, on Monday, the Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfield confirmed what many of us already knew — that Ecuador “will not be sending any war material to any country that is in an international armed conflict.”

It is, of course, just one more in a long line of US foreign policy blunders, this time in its so-called “back yard” (or as Biden calls it, “front yard”). If Washington cannot even cobble together a credible military partnership with a country as small as Ecuador without making both it and the Ecuadorian government look silly, what hope does it have of countering rising Chinese and Russian influence in its direct neighbourhood? It also means that weapons-starved Kiev will have to wait even longer — presumably an eternity after this debacle — to receive Russian or Soviet-made weapons from Latin America.