Wary Ukraine restricts entry of Russian males

Ukraine is restricting the entry of Russian men aged 16 to 60 on the fear that Russia could form “units of private armies”, said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko late on Thursday.The measure is to “prevent Russians from implementing in Ukraine the operations that they planned in 2014”, Poroshenko said on Twitter, referring to the outbreak of a pro-Russian separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine four years ago.Poroshenko said that such militia units are “in reality representatives of the armed forces of the Russian Federation”.More than 10,000 people, including 2,700 civilians, have been killed in the conflict between Russia-loyal separatist groups and the Ukrainian military, according to estimates by the United Nations.Russian President Vladimir Putin has represented the separatists in international negotiations, but his government denies providing them active servicemen or weaponry.Moscow slammed the move, but said it will not impose similar restrictions on Ukrainians.Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the decision was part of the “ill-conceived, wild direction” of the Ukrainian leadership.She told a press briefing yesterday that to try and mirror the travel ban “would lead to some kind of insanity”.Belarus, which has become a transit point between the two countries since direct flights between Kyiv and Moscow were suspended in 2015, said yesterday that Ukraine had barred entry for 144 Russians this week.“Different airports in Ukraine banned entry to a total of 50 Russians arriving from Belarus in one day,” a representative of the Belarusian border service told Russian agencies. “Thus, since the start of the week, 144 Russian citizens travelling via different airlines, including foreign ones, have returned to (Belarus’) capital Minsk.”Tensions between Ukraine and neighbouring Russia escalated last weekend when the Russian coastguard opened fire and captured several Ukrainian naval vessels near the Russian-annexed Crimea region, which Ukraine maintains is its territory.Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman called for harsher EU sanctions against Russia in response to the naval clash, according to an interview published yesterday.“Russia is an aggressor and an occupier,” Groysman told German newspaper Die Welt.Groysman also criticised the planned expansion of a natural gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany – Nord Stream 2 – asserting that it drives the European Union towards dependence on Russia.“It is not just harmful for Ukraine, but for the whole continent,” Groysman told the newspaper.Ukraine is set to lose billions of dollars in transit fees as the gas corridor does not pass through its territory.German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has warned that the pipeline issue should not be mixed up with the Crimea tensions.“Those are two different areas,” Altmaier, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told German public broadcaster ARD earlier this week.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, seen as one of Putin’s most important allies in the EU, took Kyiv’s side in the flare-up of tensions between Ukraine and Russia yesterday.The right-wing leader declared “we are a pro-Ukrainian government”, though in the same breath he accused Groysman’s cabinet of being “anti-Hungarian”.Putin, at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, bashed the “vicious practice” of using unilateral sanctions as “illegal”.“It is impossible not to see that unfair competition is increasingly replacing honest and equitable intergovernmental dialogue,” Putin said in a speech, excerpts of which were carried by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.The European Union and other Western powers, including the United States, began a series of sanctions against Russia four years ago because of its involvement in the Ukraine crisis.Russia has followed suit with countersanctions against those countries and included a sweeping ban on agricultural imports.“A vicious practice of using illegal unilateral sanctions, protectionist measures to circumvent the UN Charter, WTO (World Trade Organisation) rules and other generally accepted rules of law, is spreading,” Putin said in the speech.This practice is “leading to a collapse of business ties, a loss of trust between participants in economic relations” and “tearing the very fabric of the global economy”, the Russian leader said.