KIEV, June 20 (RIA Novosti) – The Ukrainian army is almost done shutting down its eastern border with Russia, according to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada Chairman and former interim President Oleksandr Turchynov.
“The Defense Ministry has informed [me] that our army divisions have approached the village of Izvaryno meaning that the operation to close the border is nearing completion,” said Turchinov, who heads the Ukrainian unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
Ukraine’s acting Defense Minister Mykhailo Koval earlier vowed to regain control of the Luhansk region’s border in the east to set up a buffer zone. As of now, the border is mostly under the control of the republic’s defense forces.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday he was uncertain about the meaning of this border operation. The top diplomat said that if it was Kiev’s intention to cut off all working migration routes between the neighboring regions in Russia and Ukraine, he wished to know what was being done.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he would order a unilateral ceasefire in the east after his troops regained the upper hand on the border, but acting Defense Minister Mykhailo Koval said the plan was also to wrest control of the area in a few days.
Since mid-April, Kiev authorities have been conducting a special military operation to suppress the pro-independence movement. Hundreds of people, including civilians, have died in the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics in the east of Ukraine over the past months.
Moscow has been calling for an immediate stop to the military operation in the southeast of Ukraine, which has already led to dozens of fatalities and injuries.
