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Ukraine to tighten Russia travel rules
Journal Staff Report

KYIV, March 21 - Ukraine will tighten control over travel by Russian citizens to the country, according to a decree signed by President Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday, a further move by the authorities to distance Ukraine from its neighbor and one-time ally, Reuters reported.

Russians and Ukrainians have travelled freely between each other’s countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but Kyiv has sought to implement a stricter regime in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and role in the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko has now signed a decree that will require Russians and citizens of certain other countries to notify the Ukrainian authorities in advance about their reason for travelling to Ukraine.

This is aimed at “safeguarding state security and neutralising threats in the areas of migrations and citizenship”, Poroshenko’s administration said in a statement.

The decree relates to “foreigners, particularly citizens of the Russian Federation and individuals without citizenship, who come from migration risk countries”, the statement said, without giving further details on which countries this concerned.

According to the Ukrainian state border service, there were 1.5 million trips by Russians to Ukraine in 2017.

The tighter travel regime between Ukraine and Russia comes as Ukrainians have been increasing travel to the European Union due to visa-free regime that had been introduced last year.

Ukrainians have crossed the EU member states' border almost 11 million times since the entry into force of the visa-free regime between Ukraine and the EU, which is by 15% more than in the same period in 2016, according to a press release from the EU Delegation to Ukraine, published on December 11 2017.

"Visa free travel boosted the benefits of the free trade area between the EU and Ukraine. Moreover it contributed to the increase of exports from Ukraine to the EU by 29% over the first nine months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016," the press release said.

The government has a month to implement the tighter Russia travel decision, but it is not clear when the new rule will come into force.

At the start of 2018, Ukraine introduced biometric controls for Russians entering the country, but the government has stopped short of imposing a formal visa regime.

Relations between Kyiv and Moscow are at an all-time low after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and backed pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region in an ongoing conflict that has killed over 10,000 people. (rt/om/ez)




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