MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine has recently denied entry to over 11,000 Russian citizens, citing a need to prevent radicals from entering the country, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Security Service said Thursday.
"As part of 'Operation Border,' over 11,000 citizens of the Russian Federation were denied access [to the country] in an effort to prevent radicals from entering Ukraine," Marina Ostapenko said.
It was unclear on what basis or criteria they were denied entry.
Recent measures taken by the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service in stepping up security on the border with Russia resulted in the huge number of entry denials.
The news was not the first of entry denials in Ukraine, with a number of Russian journalists having faced difficulties in recent weeks when trying to enter the country.
Last week, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović said that over 20 Russian journalists had been denied access to Ukraine.
RIA Novosti photographer Alexei Kudenko was prevented from entering the country after arriving at the Donetsk airport last week, while another RIA Novosti correspondent, Andrei Malyshkin, was removed from a train heading to the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk.
The country also barred the entry of the editor-in-chief of the Russian Pioneer magazine, Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov and photographer Dmitry Azarov.
There have been numerous reports of attacks on journalists who have traveled to the region to cover the ongoing protests, in addition to entry and accreditation bans.
The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier slammed Ukraine for banning Russian journalists from covering events in the country.
"The events in Ukraine show that the situation has got out of hand and is taking on abnormal proportions," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this week, commenting on the entry bans.
Mass rallies in Ukraine have been ongoing since the Ukrainian Parliament ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and scheduled early presidential elections for May 25.
