Putin Extends Western Food Import Ban to End-2028

This is a continuity signal rather than a policy shift: the 2014 counter-sanctions architecture is being locked in well past the current horizon, which matters less for Western exporters already largely displaced from the Russian market than for the domestic producers and import-substitution supply chains that have grown around the ban. The two-year extension gives those incumbents a longer planning runway and reduces the near-term incentive to normalize trade ties. Whether the same logic gets extended to the next decree cycle, and how Russia's own food inflation and import channels from non-Western suppliers evolve, is the open question.