The ban for foreigners to enter Ukraine during the COVID-19 pandemic has expired, according to the State Border Guard Service.
From now on, starting on Sept. 28, foreign citizens are allowed to cross the country’s borders, even though the Ukrainian government hasn’t officially announced that.
Oleg Boyko, a spokesperson at the State Border Guard Service, can “neither confirm nor deny” that the ban was canceled because the government didn’t provide further guidelines.
“As of now, we follow a decree that says that the entry ban lasts until Sep. 28,” Boyko told the Kyiv Post.
According to him, the government has not scheduled an extraordinary meeting to discuss the extension of the ban, so it expires on Sept. 28.
Last week, on Sept. 25, three Ukrainian news websites Ukrainska Pravda, RBK-Ukraine and Interfax reported that Ukraine wouldn’t extend the entry ban, citing their sources at the government.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, the government will create new rules for foreigners entering Ukraine. It is expected that Ukraine will equate foreign citizens to Ukrainians arriving from abroad: If citizens travel from the country where the number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in the last 14 days is higher than in Ukraine, they need to undergo self-isolation or make a PCR test upon arrival. A multilingual, updated list of red & green countries by the Ministry of Health can be found here.
No other special rules for foreigners have been adopted yet, according to Andriy Demchenko, an aide of the head of the State Border Guard Service.
On Aug. 29, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that Ukraine would close its borders to foreign citizens for a month following the government’s decision to extend the coronavirus quarantine until Oct. 31 due to the rising number of infections in the country.
Experts, however, said that this decision was hectic and unsubstantiated and wouldn’t affect the rapid increase of new infections in Ukraine.
When Ukraine introduced the ban it registered nearly 2,000 new COVID-19 cases a day. Over the last week, Ukraine has been reporting over 3,000 new cases every day.
