SIMFEROPOL, June 15. /TASS/. The Crimea-Donbass route via Mariupol, Melitopol and Kherson is now available for civilian vehicles, a high-ranking Zaporozhye Region official has told TASS.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said last week that the mainland road to Crimea via the cities of Mariupol, Berdyansk and Melitopol had been opened. Crimea head Sergey Aksyonov said the route was used to deliver food and military cargo, adding that it was too early to speak about civilian traffic.

"[The route] is fit not only for the military," a member of the chief council of Zaporozhye Region’s civil-military administration Vladimir Rogov said. "I have already travelled from Kherson to Melitopol via Berdyansk, Mariupol and Novoazovsk. I travelled to Russia from Novoazovsk. I drove an ordinary civilian vehicle, not a military one. People are using this path, many of them do, and there are also queues on the border as it was not designed for such heavy traffic. But this route does exist."

He added that he was looking forward to resumption of traffic via the standard Moscow-Crimea route via Zaporozhye and Kharkov, used in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. The path was closed by Ukraine following Crimea’s reunification with Russia in 2014. The railroad was not functioning at all, while car travel was possible only for private vehicles.