You're reading: Official: Ukraine should immediately organize defense of border with Russia

The head of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service, Mykola Lytvyn, has called for defense lines to be built along the country's border with Russia.

“In this difficult time for Ukraine I want to state as follows with
my full responsibility that Ukraine should immediately organize the
defense, not the security of the Ukrainian-Russian part of our national
border, employing all government resources, especially on those parts in
the Luhansk and Donetsk regions,” he told press conference in Kyiv on May 28.

Law enforcers and local authorities need to organize cooperation to defend the national border, Lytvyn said.

“I want to officially note that in the current reality this is
extremely hard to do relying on the efforts of the border guard service
alone. I stated this dozens of times at the highest level at various
meetings. I was listened to, someone agreed, but border guards were and
still remain one on one with bandits on the border,” he said.

The chief of the border guard service therefore hopes that the
newly-elected Ukrainian president will do everything in his power to
make sure border guards receive help for efficient protection of the
country’s borders.

Lytvyn also said that Russian border guards are not responding to violation of the Ukrainian border on the Russian part.

“Regrettably, the Russian border agency continues to pretend that
even today nothing to worry about is happening on our joint border. This
undeclared war will still end one day, and I am not sure that those
whom we had for years considered our partners in service could look us
in the eyes,” he said.

He mentioned several cases where groups of armed men on the Russian side tried to break into Ukraine.

Meanwhile, a day earlier the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)
Border Service denied the reports that vehicles carrying armed men had
crossed the border with Ukraine.