RUSSIA BUILDS FENCE COMPLETELY CUTTING OCCUPIED CRIMEA FROM UKRAINE
Natalia Datskevych
Russia’s state security service, better known as the FSB, announced the completion of a high-tech fence on the Isthmus of Perekop, Crimea’s bottleneck that connects the Kremlin-occupied peninsula with Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast, BBC reported on December 28, 2018.
The project started in 2017, three years after the peninsula was illegally annexed by Russia. Now, 60 kilometers of the two-meter high fence towering on the Isthmus, which is the only one legal way to enter Crimea from Ukraine.
“It was built to protect against crazy tricks of the current Ukrainian government and inadequate radicals,” said Efim Fix, vice speaker of the internationally unrecognized Crimean Parliament, BBC wrote.
The fence is equipped with barbed wire and night-vision video cameras. It also has vibration and radio-beam alarming systems, with several hundreds of sensors, detecting the danger.
RIA Novosti, Russia’s state-run news agency, cited the FSB saying that the fence was constructed to prevent Crimea from the number of threats, such as attempts to break through reconnaissance groups from Ukraine, smuggling the weapon, tobacco, alcohol products, fuel or drugs.
It was also made to prevent crossing the border by Ukrainian citizens for domestic purposes.
Oleh Slobodyan, spokesperson at the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, confirmed the appearance of the fence on the border with the occupied Crimea, which is not easy visible.
“The construction is not visible from mainland Ukraine, as it is located far inland,” said Slobodyan, Interfax reported.
However, he has serious doubts that the fence will work properly.
“According to the information we have, it is quite raw. There were installed devices that have not been tested yet and only recently developed,” Slobodyan told.
Protective fence is already not the first Russia’s project for the final cutting off the Crimea from Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin opened the illegally constructed a 19-kilometerbridge across the Kerch Strait connecting Russia’s Taman Peninsula with Crimea on May 15.
After the automobile section of the bridge was opened, Russia started stopping Ukrainian and international cargo vessels for checking and searching for possible saboteurs planning to blow up the Crimean bridge. As a result, Ukrainian shippers lost millions of hryvnias in profits.
