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According to the State Border Guard of Ukraine, Ukrainians suffer from psychological and physical pressure at Russian border checkpoints
State Border Guard claims it dealt with a number of incidents when Ukrainians were threatened or even beaten by Russian security services, reports UNIAN.
The press secretary of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, Oleh Slobodian, says that the Russian special services keep records of citizens of Ukraine, who regularly travel to the Russian Federation, in a border guards' database "Kaskad-Potok". Mostly they pay attention to people who often cross the Ukrainian-Russian border in private affairs; those who have relatives in border regions of Russia, and owners of Russian registration plates for vehicles are facing the highest risk.
As the Ukrainian travelers identified as "suspicious", their passports are seized and they are questioned by the special services. Ukrainian citizens are intimidated and threatened to be banned from entry to Russia, sometimes they are beaten and robbed.
According to Slobodian, Ukrainian border guards learned from the Ukrainian citizens, who had been detained in Russia, of repeated attempts by the FSB to persuade them to cooperate or confess to collecting intelligence in favor of Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said in an interview that the country prepares to imply visa regime with Russian Federation.
"First of all, we have to move in the direction of monitoring, who is coming from Russia to Ukraine. But let's be honest with ourselves: we are at war with Russia today. What is more, the war is both classic and hybrid. But at the same time, we have several millions of our fellow citizens staying in Russia. And Russia knows what provocations to resort to once we introduce a visa regime," Klimkin told a morning TV show "Snidanok z 1+1" Thursday. "We're analyzing this and we'll come out with a proposal on how we will do this and on the deadlines as well," he said.
http://www.unian.info/politics/16921...d-service.html
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