MOSCOW — Russia retaliated on Thursday for Western sanctions against Moscow, announcing that it was banning imports of a wide range of food and agricultural products from Europe and the United States, among others. The move raised the level of confrontation over Ukraine with measures that seemed likely to affect Russian consumers at least as much as European farming.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, the prime minister, announced that Russia would ban all beef, pork, fish, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway for one year.
“We hoped until the very last that our foreign colleagues would realize that sanctions are a dead end and that nobody needs them,” Mr. Medvedev said. “Things have turned out in such a way that we have to implement retaliatory measures.”