Foreigners wanting to visit Ukrainian border areas for business or merely to take a holiday will soon have to obtain a special permit from the government.
The new regulation, issued earlier this month and due to come into effect on Sept. 1, is intended to give the government, fighting against drug smugglers and illegal immigration, tighter control along Ukraine’s land and sea borders. The new border zone includes popular resorts in the Crimea, Zakarpattya and the city of Odessa.
According to the new regulation foreigners can only stay in the zones if they have a permit in addition to their normal identification documents.
The idea for the new regulation was suggested to the government by the State Committee for Borders Security as an effective mechanism to stop both, the flow of illegal migrants and the growing amount of smuggled drugs through Ukrainian borders, according to Anatoly Samarchenko, the organisation’s spoke-sman.
Samarchenko said that Ukraine has recently become a favorite route for illegal migrants from Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. They use Ukraine as a staging post to head for western Europe. He said Ukrainian border guards have detained 11,000 illegal migrants and over 6,000 tons of drugs in the first half of this year alone.
‘It’s time to bring order to the borders,’ said Samarchenko.
He said the five kilometer swathe of the territory around Ukraine’s borders that is already intensively patrolled was merely being expanded to depths of from 30 to 50 kilometers from the border. The new zone will be enforced by border guards and police officers enabling them to detain a foreign citizen without the required documents.
‘We’ll have a full right to detain him [the foreigner] if he doesn’t have the necessary papers,’ said Samarchenko.
However, he said the requirements for Ukrainians have been significantly simplified. A student card or a driving license is now enough for identification.
Samarchenko emphasized that the new rules are not supposed to affect the foreigners currently living or working in Ukraine. He said the new regulations will not cause a problem for expatriates who planned to spend their vacations on the Black Sea coast or in the Carpathian mountains.
‘It’s just one little inconvenience,’said Samarchenko.’Once you have this permit, my dear, you can go to the Crimea, the Carpathians or wherever you want,’ he said, addressing an imaginary foreigner.
Samarchenko failed to explain where the foreigners will have to apply for the permit and how they will have to convince the authorities of their good intentions. He said further details, including the price of the new service, will be released before the end of the month.
An intelligence source told the Post that the smuggling of illegal immigrants had become a boom business. He said: ‘At the moment Ukraine is a transit country and that is a big enough problem dealing with the people that are detained or dumped here by the smugglers. But it could become an even bigger problem if Ukraine becomes a country of destination for the illegal immigrants.’
The new rules recall Soviet-era red tape when visitors had to obtain visas which listed every place in the country that they wanted to visit and were forbidden from venturing into certain areas – usually those considered militarily sensitive – altogether. The prospect of being liable to identity checks while they are trying to enjoy themselves on a beach or hiking through the mountains is also likely to be off-putting to many people.
The Ukrainian press expressed concern that the new regulation would make local resorts even less attractive to foreigners.
‘What foreigner would go through additional bureaucratic procedures, apart from expensive visas, in order to spend a vacation in a region where there are frequent shootings and poor service is overpriced?’ wondered the newspaper Stolichnye Novosti.
Private travel agencies in Kyiv were puzzled by the new government instruction. They were also convinced that the new measures would discourage foreigners from going to Ukrainian resorts and bringing their cash, desperately needed to develop the infant tourist infrastructure in the country.
‘It’s just a new bureaucratic procedure that will cost a foreigner more time and money,’ said Tatyana Lapteva, manager of the Krok Marketing travel agency.
Some foreigners had a more prosaic comment on the new regulation.
‘It’s stupid,’ said Lucie Andresova, a Czech living in Kyiv, who spent her last vacation in the Crimea, ‘I simply won’t be going there any more.’
