Moscow: An upscale Russian store chain apologised Thursday for selling chopping boards with an image of US President Barack Obama as a monkey, after the US embassy reacted furiously. The product features a family of monkeys, with an image of Obama’s face superimposed onto that of the smallest primate. The store chain Thursday announced it had pulled the item from its shelves, saying it had not been aware of Obama’s image. “Sales of the chopping boards have been stopped,” Valentina Moiseyeva, a spokeswoman for the Bakhetle supermarket chain, TASS agency reported. The board is styled as a calendar for 2016, the year of the monkey according to the Chinese zodiac. The Bakhetle chain is based in Russia’s traditionally Muslim region of Tatarstan but has stores throughout the country. “Disgusting to see that such blatant racism has a place on Russian store shelves,” Will Stevens, the spokesman for the US Embassy in Moscow, wrote on Twitter.