KIEV, September 21. /TASS/. Hundreds of trucks stand in lines towards the Chongar, Chaplinka and Kalanchak checkpoints on Ukraine’s border with Crimea as a result of the so-called food blockade of the peninsula.
"More than 800 trucks have been counted at the border checkpoints," Ukrainian mass media said on Monday.
According to the reports, in the Kherson Region trucks entering and exiting the peninsula are blocked.
On Sunday, September 20, a group of protesters under Ukrainian parliament member Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatars in Ukraine Refat Chubarov and the Right Sector group, banned in Russia, launched what they called food blockade of the Crimea to have restricted the traffic of trucks carrying foods to Crimea through border checkpoints.
The Crimean board guards department of the federal security service FSB has said no trucks cross the border into Crimea from Ukraine.
"Cargo traffic from Ukraine is stalled. Passenger busses and cars go either way as usual. Russian checkpoints are prepared to let through both passengers and cargoes in the normal mode," the border guards department said.
The deputy police chief in Ukraine’s Kherson Region, Ilya Kiva, confirmed on his page in Facebook that "at the moment all three roads to Crimea are blocked. He argues that the suspension of the Crimea-bound truck traffic is "civil blockade of Crimea is aimed at fighting corruption.
"It is most important that this civil blockade of Crimea eliminates multi-billion customs and border corruption schemes," Kiva said.
In reply, Crimea’s head Sergey Aksyonov said that Ukrainian goods in Crimean supermarkets will be fully replaced by their Russian substitutes within two weeks.
"Practically all supermarket chains and individual businessmen have concluded contracts with farm producers on the mainland. Already now 90% of foods at the outdoor bazaars are Russian-produced. In two week’s time there will be no Ukrainian foods left on the supermarket shelves," he told the Rossiya-24 round-the-clock news channel.