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LPR head blasts Kiev for deliberately exacerbating situation at checkpoint sites

Agreements to open new entry-exit checkpoints across the contact line in the area of Shchastye and Zolotoye towns were achieved between LPR and Ukraine representatives in March 2020

LUGANSK, August 18./TASS/. Kiev is deliberately exacerbating the situation in the areas along the contact line where new checkpoints are to be opened between the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and Ukraine, LPR leader Leonid Pasechnik said in an interview with TASS on Wednesday.

Agreements to open new entry-exit checkpoints across the contact line in the area of Shchastye and Zolotoye towns were achieved between LPR and Ukraine representatives in March 2020. On November 10, 2020, Kiev unilaterally announced the opening of these checkpoints without coordinating some key issues with the LPR. Lugansk dubbed this as provocation. Currently, only a pedestrian checkpoint is operating in the urban-type settlement of Stanitsa Luganskaya in the LPR responsibility zone.

"Ukraine is also intentionally exasperating the situation with security in these directions. Reports of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission have repeatedly stressed that the ceasefire is being violated increasingly often in the area of the Pervomaisk-Zolotoye entry-exit checkpoint," Pasechnik said.

When asked whether LPR authorities plan to tighten the rules of crossing the checkpoint at Stanitsa Lugovskaya over the growing coronavirus cases, Pasechnik said there are no plans for now. "As the epidemiological situation changes, then changes in the restrictions on movement are possible, but at the moment there is no necessity for that," the LPR leader added.

He reiterated that currently, movement through the checkpoint of Stanitsa Luganskaya is carried out "in accordance with the established rules," for vital necessities - for medical treatment, to study, care for close relatives living in the LPR, funerals of relatives as well as to obtain financial aid for Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population.

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