Ukraine in Arabic | Ukraine to build walls on border with Russia
KYIV/Ukraine in Arabic/ Ukraine has started building a wall along its border with Russia to block an influx of fighters and weapons across its frontiers and guard itself from the former Soviet neighbor that has become an "aggressor," the government said.
"On the orders of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, priority work on installing fortifications and assembling engineering barriers along certain border stretches has begun," the command of Ukraine's anti-terrorist forces said Wednesday on its Facebook page.
Construction of two defense lines is planned. Ukraine plans to dig about 1,500 km of ditches and passageways, more than 8,000 trenches for vehicles and 4,000 dugouts and build 60 km of a “blast-resistant” fence.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on September 5 said that government had prepared a draft plan named “Wall” to build fortifications to protect the Ukrainian border. The plan envisaged at the first stage to equip the border outside the conflict zone, where it is possible to immediately begin engineering work - the Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkiv and the north of the Luhansk regions.
The border with Russia is 2,295 km long, Ukrainian border guard authorities said.
A senior Ukrainian border guard official said, when presenting the plan, that it was necessary to immediately close the border.
The plan called for starting engineering work immediately to dig a four-metre wide and two-metre deep ditch and equip it with electronic systems. The border in the sea is also planned to be under full electronic monitoring.
Yatsenyuk said the government would apply to the EU for financial aid to impalement the project, adding the government had funds to implement the first stage.
A Russian senator said in this connection that bridges, not walls and ditches, should be built between Russia and Ukraine.
“Yatsenyuk’s statement about construction of a moat or a wall or mining of the border is quite an inadmissible move of history planned by Kiev authorities,” Yuri Vorobyov, deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s upper house Federation Council, said on Thursday, commenting on the Ukrainian prime minister’s statement about construction of a wall on the border with Russia.
“Such statements cause dissonance against the background of the Russian president’s peace plan. A way to be separated by walls and ditches is a way to nowhere,” the senator said, adding that such statements were purely propagandistic.
“I do not think it is possible to build such a wall... but the course of political developments is alarming,” he said, adding that “The two fraternal nations certainly sooner or later will be close brothers as it has been since ancient times.