KYIV. Dec 4 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian border guard has denied admittance to over 600 Russian citizens since the declaration of martial law, and the number of Russians wanting to visit Ukraine has fallen 66% over that period, according to Ukrainian State Border Service head Petro Tsygykal.
"We have now denied admittance to over 600 Russian citizens. [...] The arrivals have dropped 66% over this period," Tsygykal told the television channel UATV in an interview.
As to why female Russian citizens had been denied entry, he said there were a number of reasons, such as previous visits to Crimea, which Ukraine considers to have been annexed.
"A woman may be recruited and pose a threat. [...] There is such a notion as second-line control - we use a special questionnaire to conduct our interviews. If there is information regarding a woman or she cannot explain the purpose of her visit, we deny admittance. As a rule, only a handful [of female visitors] are rejected," Tsygykal said.
In the past few days, Russia has denied admittance to Ukrainian citizens, even groups of 40 to 50 people, mostly men, without an explanation, he said.
Belarusian State Border Committee spokesman Anton Bychkovsky told Interfax on Tuesday that a total of 252 Russian citizens traveling via Belarus had been denied entry Ukraine.
"Of these, 203 of them were traveling by plane, and 49 by ground transport," Bychkovsky said.
He added that the denials of entry were not massive, and that only 14 Russian citizens had been barred from entering Ukraine via airports over the past 24 hours.
On November 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed an executive order introducing martial law until 2 p.m. on December 26. The Verkhovna Rada endorsed the president's order on the same day. It was published in the parliamentary newspaper on November 28.
Martial law was declared in regions bordering Russia and Transdniestria (Vinnytsia, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Odesa, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kherson, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhya) and the internal waters of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.