KIEV, May 5. /TASS/. Kiev-appointed head of the Luhansk region Gennady Moskal is going to apply to the Ukrainian government with a request to restore small cross-border traffic in the Ukrainian settlement of Melovoye for residents of the settlement of Chertkovo in Russia’s Rostov region.
Ukraine has unilaterally terminated the bilateral agreement on local border traffic as of March 16. Now Russian citizens who live near the Ukrainian border may enter the territory of this country only through international and inter-state checkpoints and with foreign passports only.
"The North-Caucasus Railway has divided the settlement into two parts, with Melovoye left in Ukraine and Chertkovo - in Russia. The settlements along the border are linked by economic and family ties. The government decree on terminating the cross-border movements has triggered social unrest here," Moskal wrote on his official website.
According to Moskal, the state border between Melovoye and Chertkovo in some areas is conventional. "It stretches for three kilometers right along the street with a symbolic name of People’s Friendship, where there is neither drag road nor fence. Ukraine is on one side of the street and Russia - on the opposite. There are private residential houses here, shops enterprises and so on, which belong to different countries."
He added that local residents had always communicated with each other without any formalities, and now they may be detained by border guards for crossing the street, and the authorities may bring administrative action against them.
"There are more than 1,000 families here, where one of the spouses has Ukrainian citizenship and the other - Russian. Therefore, I will prepare an appeal to the government, urging it to restore the local border traffic between Ukraine and Russia in Melovoye for residents of Chertkovo," the head of the Lugansk regional administration noted.