the German government tried to lobby China and other Asian countries to separate and barring their own East German territory from exporting pork meat to these markets, while West German states could keep exporting to Asia. With the Chinese government and other Asian countries like South Korea ultimately refusing to these proposals. In January 2022 an outbreak occurred in northern Italy, detected on some dead wild boars in Liguria and in Piedmont. Eastern and Northern Europe An outbreak occurred at the beginning of 2007 in Georgia, and subsequently spread to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, and Belarus, raising concerns that ASFV may spread further geographically and have negative economic effects on the swine industry. African swine fever had become endemic in the Russian Federation since spreading into the North Caucasus in November 2007, most likely through movements of infected wild boar from Georgia to Chechnya, said a 2013 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations agency. The report showed how the disease had spread north from the Caucasus to other parts of the country where pig production was more concentrated the Central Federal District (home to 28.8% of Russia's pigs) and the Volga Federal District (with 25.4% of the national herd) and northwest towards Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the Baltic nations. In Russia, the report added, the disease was 'on its way to becoming endemic in Tver oblast' (about 106 km north of Moscow—and about 500 km east of Russia's littoral neighbours on the Baltic. Among the vectors for the spread in Russia of African swine fever virus was the 'distribution' of 'infected pig products' outside affected (quarantined and trade restricted) areas, travelling large distances (thousands of kilometers) within the country. "Wholesale buyers, particularly the military food supply system, hav[ing] been implicated multiple times in the illegal distribution of contaminated meat" were vectors for the virus's spread, said the Food and Agriculture Organization report—and evidence of that was "repeated outbreaks in Leningrad oblast". The report warned that "countries immediately bordering the Russian Federation, particularly Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Latvia, are most vulnerable to [African swine fever] introduction and endemic establishment, largely because the biosecurity of their pig sector is predominantly low. Preventing the spread of [African swine fever] into Ukraine is particularly critical for the whole pig production sector in Europe. Given the worrisome developments in the Russian Federation, European countries have to be alert. They must be