Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli said on March 30 that Russia’s decision to ban the import of Georgian wine is unfair.

“Our top priority now is to return Georgian wine to the Russian markets and, simultaneously, work on promoting Georgian wine on the markets of other CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries,” Zurab Nogaideli said.

Russia’s chief sanitary inspector stopped issuing “sanitary-epidemiological conclusions” for Georgian and Moldovan wines starting on March 27, citing “violation of sanitary-epidemiological norms.”

Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said on March 30 that the Georgian side has already developed “an action plan” to solve the current problem and appropriate measures are already underway.