Moscow, June 9 - Russia expanded a ban on milk from Belarus on Tuesday to include practically all dairy products, a top health official said.
While the measure has been justified on health grounds, it comes amid diplomatic tensions with Belarus and fits a pattern of Russian trade restrictions on neighbouring countries during political disputes.
The move came despite an announcement earlier on Tuesday that Russia and Belarus would strengthen trade ties by creating a customs union next year with Kazakhstan.
"Today I expanded the list, and now practically all dairy products from Belarus have been banned," Gennady Onishchenko, the head of consumer protection watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said in an interview with state news channel Vesti-24.
He said the ban covered almost 1,000 dairy products from Belarus, a country wedged between Russia and the European Union. Only 55 or 60 milk products have not been barred, he said.
The initial ban on around 500 milk-related items was introduced on Saturday amid diplomatic acrimony between the former Soviet republics, on the grounds that the products had failed health standards.
Belarus, which recently secured a $2.4 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund, earns billions of dollars from its dairy exports, and last year controlled about 4 percent of the Russian market.
Russia has recently grown alarmed by Belarus's tentative rapprochement with the European Union. Last week Moscow delayed giving Belarus a $500 million loan on the grounds that it could be insolvent by the end of the year, prompting an angry response from President Alexander Lukashenko
Onishchenko said he had given Belarus fair warning of the ban but Minsk took no actions to bring the milk imports in line with Russian regulations.
Russia has in the past banned meat products from Poland, wine from Moldova and mineral water from Georgia when political tensions with these countries were running high.