Members of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine conducting round-the-clock monitoring at the Gukovo and Donetsk border checkpoints have reported intense truck and rail traffic in both directions.
“During the reporting week the observation mission continued to
observe an increased number of trucks crossing the border in both
directions,” the mission said in a weekly report as of 10 a.m. on May 12
posted on May 12 evening.
“The the observer teams continued to observe dumper trucks
transporting coal from Luhansk region to the Russian Federation through
the checkpoint Gukovo. The observer teams observed intense trailer truck traffic at Donetsk’s checkpoint crossing the border in both directions,” the report said.
“While majority of the trucks are registered in Luhansk oblast,
during the reporting period the observer teams have also observed trucks registered
in Belarus and Lithuania cross the border,” the monitors said.
“They also observed tanker trucks crossing the border both ways.
These crossings occurred at both checkpoints. These trucks for the most part
had the word “Propane” and “Flammable” written across the tanks in
Russian,” they noted.
“In addition to the above-mentioned tanker trucks with the word
“Propane” and “Flammable”, the observer teams observed an unusual number of orange
articulated fuel trucks crossing at the Gukovo’s checkpoint. On one morning
eleven of these trucks were lined up at the entrance of the checkpoint waiting
to cross into Ukraine. Such movement of fuel trucks has not been seen
before,” the monitors said.
“The observers picked up on the sound of trains running down the train
tracks located approximately 150 meters south west of the checkpoint on twelve
occasions during the reporting week; the observer teams estimated that seven trains
were going to Ukraine; five were bound for the Russian Federation.
Visual observation was not possible because of the line of trees in
between the train tracks and the checkpoint,” the report added.
