MOSCOW, May 13. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine is taking no steps to have its products be back on the Russian market, head of the Russian consumer rights protection authority (Rospoterbnadzor) Anna Popova told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.

“In compliance with rules, the negotiating process is in competence of experts, but as of today we have no applications from Ukraine to work at this level,” she said.

Earlier on Tuesday, a spokesman for Russia’s National Union of Milk Producers (Soyuzmoloko) told Itar-Tass that Ukraine’s cheese exports to Russian had dropped five-fold in April 2014 to mere 883 tonnes. A month before Russia had imported 4,800 tonnes of cheese from Ukraine.

Russian imports of Ukrainian dry milk whey decreased six-fold to 140,000 tonnes in April 2014, from 820,000 tonnes in March. However imports of Ukrainian butter increased ten-fold in April to 394,000 tonnes. In March Russia imported 40,000 tonnes of butter from Ukraine.

According to Soyuzmoloko, such changes in the structure of Russia’s imports from Ukraine stemmed from the Russian consumer rights watchdog’s ban on imports of products from a number of Ukrainian cheese dairies.

On April 7, Russia’s consumer rights protection authority (Rospotrebnadzor) imposed a ban on cheese imports from seven Ukrainian companies over non-compliance to the norms of technical regulations of the Customs Union [of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan]. The ban is applicable to the following Ukrainian companies: the Ros private enterprise, a subsidiary of Akhtyrsky cheese dairy; the Pripyat cheese dairy; Gadyachsyr; Zolotonoshsky Dairy, and Tekhmolprom.

Ukraine is second after Belarus supplier of cheese on the Russian market. In 2013, Ukraine exported to Russia 50,000 tonnes of cheese worth 315 million U.S. dollars, whereas Russia’s imports of Belarusian cheese stood at 110,000 tonnes, or 495 million U.S. dollars.