KIEV, December 14. /TASS/. A Russian female journalist was denied entry to Ukraine at Kiev’s Borispol airport, the press office of Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service said on Saturday.
"A woman arrived in Ukraine on a flight from Istanbul. It was found out that she works as a reporter for social issues on a Russian TV channel," the statement said.
According to the border guard service, it established that she had visited Crimea, which is considered as a violation of border crossing procedures in Ukraine. The reporter was not identified by the press office, but she was said to have been banned from entering the country in the next three years.
According to Ukraine’s Border Guard Service, more than 5,000 violations were disclosed since the beginning of 2019 concerning visits to the Black Sea peninsula, which Ukraine believes to be occupied, and more than 4,200 administrative offence reports have been filed.
On December 9 at the Paris summit of Normandy Four, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky invited Russian journalists to come to Ukraine and assess the situation in the country in person. In recent years, Russian journalists have been denied entry to the country. On Thursday, reporters of Zvezda television channel were allowed by Ukrainian border guards to cross the border. Nevertheless, on Friday, a camera crew of the Russian television channel NTV was barred from entering at Kiev’s airport.