Unable to control much of its border with Russia, Ukraine has decided to wall the problems off, quite literally. The nation's top officials believe that a 2,000-kilometer-long wall will protect the country from a further invasion by Russia, and have announced a plan to build one.
The
ambitious construction project, announced by the Ukrainian government in early
September, has already been dubbed the
European Rampart. The plan is to tighten security along the whole perimeter of
the Russian border, which stretches along 2,295 kilometers. It has never been
fully demarcated.
The
defensive structures will include ditches, test-track lanes,
vehicle-barrier trenches and optical surveillance towers to detect troop and
vehicle movement from the Russian side, the government says.
The wall
will stretch along the perimeter of Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy Oblasts, as
well as the northern part of Luhansk Oblast. It will also be built
along the border with the annexed Crimea peninsula close to Mariupol, Berdiansk
and Genichesk cities, according to the plan designed by Ukraine’s State Border
Service and the National Security and Defense Council.
The
problem is there are few fans of this idea outside the government. Critics say
that the project might turn into one of the most elaborate corrupt schemes of
our time, but so far the Cabinet of Ministers won’t budge.
Prime
Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk recently said that “nobody will
grant a visa-free regime to Ukraine if there is no actual
border.” On Oct. 15 he visited the village of Hoptivka in Kharkiv Oblast to
inspect the start of the project, which he hopes will be mostly financed by
foreign donors.
At an Oct.
8 Cabinet meeting, Yatsenyuk said that the wall will cost €66 million to build.
A week later he said that the European Union extended some Hr 235 million (€14
million) to cover some costs.
The
first idea to construct the wall was voiced in June by Ukrainian billionaire
Ihor Kolomoisky, who co-owns Privat Bank and governs Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. He
said he was ready to cough up €100 million for the project.
But all
the figures floated around seem to be very low compared to similar projects in
the world. For instance, the Israeli “anti-terrorist fence”
project, which commenced more than a decade ago and is still under
construction, has cost at least $2 billion to date. It’s supposed to stretch
along 800 kilometers (500 miles) of border with Palestine. Its maintenance
costs another $260 million per year.
Although
it was not designed to be completely impenetrable, the Israeli wall was a huge
success, reducing the number of terrorist attacks by more than 90 percent,
according to estimates of some western media.
In
Ukraine, however, experts see more potential down sides than
benefits. Daryna Kalenyuk, an expert at Kyiv-based Anticorruption Action Centre, says
the only way to stop money-laundering and corruption in this project is to get
western donors involved.
“They
should have access to the documents and also it would be a good thing to invite
foreign construction specialists to supervise and control the quality of the
work,” Kalenyuk says.
The State
Border Service failed to provide financial reports or other documents
on the project in response to a Kyiv Post inquiry, despite the fact that
Ukraine’s law on public access to information requires government agencies to
disclose such types of data.
In a written response to
the Kyiv Post , the Border Service said that currently work is under
way in eastern Ukrainian oblasts and along the Crimean border, but failed to
provide more specifics.
Yatsenyuk
has said that the project will be finished within 56 months. He also said it
will create jobs during the economic recession. As of mid-October, some 1,145
people were involved in the construction, Yatsenyuk said on Oct. 15 during his site
visit to Hoptivka.
But
many of Yatsenyuk’s political rivals believe that Ukraine’s wall is purely of
symbolic value. Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of Batkivshchyna party, says
such “murky projects” emerged when the government fails to act effectively.
“We
don’t have any good historical examples. There are the Great Wall of China, the
Maginot Line and Mannerheim Line – none of this worked well to defend countries
during military aggression,” Tymoshenko said a talk show last month.
But Viktoria
Siumar, a former National Security and Defense Council official who successfully
ran for parliament on Yatsenyk’s party list, says the project has a lot of
potential.
“As
long as Ukraine’s borders are not protected, Ukraine is unprotected and so the
country couldn’t be a member of the European Union,” Siumar told the Kyiv Post.
“The entire eastern border with Russia is not secure – Ukraine has no control
over its border in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.”
Siumar
said Ukraine will not be able to win the ongoing war with Russia until the
border is secure. “At the very least, the wall should be a barrier against
smuggling and illegal vehicle movements,” Siumar said.
Viacheslav
Tseluiko, a military expert at the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament
Studies, says that the wall might deter contraband, but will remain ineffective
in case of a full-scale military invasion.
“For
example the construction of tank detachments is very expensive and it’s not
effective without troop support. Also Ukraine doesn’t have enough troops to
make more than 2,000 kilometers of border secure,” Tseluiko added.
A
better option, he says, is to strengthen key cities in the east and southeast
of the country, building several lines of defense, in the same style its being
done in Mariupol, which came close to being invaded by Russian troops in late
August-early September.
Siumar
dismissed the project’s critics as those who do not want Ukraine to succeed,
but many of them stand by their opinion. One of them is political analyst
Volodymyr Fesenko of Penta consultancy, who described the wall project
as a “stupid public relations stunt.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can
be reached at [email protected].
