KIEV, March 19, /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s Council for National Security and Defense has taken a decision to introduce travel visas for Russian citizens, Andrei Parubiy, the acting secretary of the council told reporters Wednesday.

Traveling between the two countries has always been visa-free since 1991 when Ukraine declared itself independent from the USSR.

“The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine has received an instruction to introduce travel visas for the citizens of the Russian Federation,” Parubiy said in a comment on the decisions taken by the meeting.

“The Cabinet of Ministers has been told to appeal to the UN immediately for the purpose of declaring Crimea a demilitarized zone and to take all the measures towards ensuring that Russian troops leave the peninsula, as well as to guarantee the appropriate conditions for a re-deployment of Ukrainian troops to the continental mainland of Ukraine,” he said.

According to Parubiy, the cabinet of ministers has been offered to consider an evacuation of the Ukrainian civilians in Crimea who will declare their unwillingness to continue living there.