GERMANY’S Angela Merkel said Tuesday there were no plans at present for further economic sanctions on Russia over Ukraine but she was unhappy that a ceasefire agreement was being broken and that pro-Russian rebels had gone ahead with their elections.

    “We are not satisfied with the situation of the Minsk agreement because large parts of the Minsk agreement are not being implemented,” she said, adding that the ceasefire and respect for Ukraine’s borders were both being flouted.

    The chancellor said she would speak to Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and Russia’s Vladimir Putin and reiterated her intention to have European Union travel bans extended to newly elected separatist officials in eastern Ukraine.

    “Beyond that, further economic sanctions are not planned at the moment, we are focusing on the winter and the humanitarian situation there and how to get a real ceasefire,” she said.

    Meanwhile, South Africa will resume seafood exports to Russia for the first time in almost two decades as Moscow looks elsewhere for food sources following Western sanctions over Ukraine.

    Russia gave 12 South African firms rights to supply canned and frozen fish from last Wednesday, according to a notice on the Russian veterinary and phytosanitary service’s website.

    Moscow banned most Western food imports, worth US$9 billion a year, in August in response to the United States and European Union’s sanctions over Russia’s role in Ukraine.

    “Since the late 1990s, this is the first time South African fish will be exported to Russia on a commercial basis,” Felix Ratheb, chief executive of the Cape Town-based Sea Harvest, told Reuters.

    Ratheb said its first exports to Russia were expected in early 2015 and would begin at about 500 tons a year, worth between 25 million rand (US$2 million) to 40 million rand.

    South Africa’s total fish exports in 2012 were valued at 3.5 billion rand but this figure could increase if Russia becomes a major importer, Ratheb said.

    South Africa’s trade and industry minister, Rob Davies, said in September that exports to Russia rose 11 percent between 2012 and 2013.

    (SD-Agencies)