Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld announced on Monday that the country was not planning to send Soviet-era weapons to Ukraine amid disagreements with Moscow over banana and flower exports.
Ecuador will not send any war material to a country that is involved in an international armed conflict.
President Daniel Noboa stated in January that the country had agreed to swap obsolete military equipment for new US weapons worth about $200 million.
Ecuador planned to send six Russian military helicopters, long-range missile launchers and air defence systems to the United States to be subsequently delivered from the US to Ukraine. In exchange, Ecuador was to receive modern weapons to fight local drug trafficking gangs.
In response to Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry statement, Russia criticised the decision and banned the import of some Ecuadorian bananas and flowers, citing the detection of a harmful humpback fly in those goods. Ecuador is considered the world’s largest exporter of bananas and one of the largest exporters of flowers, mainly roses.
According to Russian media, nine out of 10 bananas imported to Russia originate from Ecuador. In 2023, Ecuador exported over 6.5 million tonnes of bananas worth $690 million, a fifth of which was supplied to Russia.
After assessing the risks of an embargo imposed by Moscow and calculating the losses, Ecuadorian authorities abandoned a plan to supply obsolete weapons to Kyiv via Washington, with President Noboa calling the weapons “a scrap metal.”
Earlier, on 10 January, Noboa announced that Ecuador would transfer its Russian- and Ukrainian-made military equipment to the USA in exchange for new equipment worth 200 million dollars. Then, in February, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Affairs, Kevin Sullivan, announced that the Russian-made equipment from Ecuador would be sent to Ukraine.
