WARSAW: With tongue-in-cheek messages like “an apple a day keeps Putin away!” Poles have taken to social media with gusto to promote Polish fruit in defiance of President Vladimir Putin’s decision to ban imports into Russia.

Using the hashtag #jedzjablka (#eatapples), Poles, including prominent politicians, tweeted pictures of themselves eating apples or drinking cider, including outside the Polish foreign ministry and the Russian embassy in Warsaw.

On Facebook too, a campaign named Jedz Jablka na Zlosc Puti­nowi” (Eat apples to annoy Putin) got underway, earning more than 20,000 likes in a matter of hours.

One picture trending on Twitter of Putin with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev carried the caption “Now, to really annoy the Poles, let’s buy up all their apples”.

Another showed a modified version of the famous World War One recruitment poster with Britain’s Lord Kitchener, finger outstretched, beside a superimposed picture of a rosy red apple and the words: “Have you eaten today? Your country needs you.”

Moscow announced its ban on most fruit and vegetable imports from Poland on Wednesday following the European Union’s decision to impose sanctions targeting Russia’s banking, oil and defence sectors because of the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine.

Poland is the world’s largest exporter of apples with more than two-thirds of them going to Russia. The statistics office put the value of Poland’s apple exports to Russia last year at 273 million euros ($366m).

Despite the blow to its large and politically important farm sector, Poland has been a firm supporter of the sanctions against Russia, its communist-era overlord, and the support has not only come from social media channels.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd , 2014