STAVROPOL. Feb 24 (Interfax-AVN) - Servicemen of the North Caucasus regional border guard directorate detained several foreigners last weekend, the directorate's press service reported on Tuesday.
"While performing border controls aboard the Akvarama ship that arrived in Astrakhan from Kazakhstan under the Russian flag, border guards found a can with nearly 500g of raw opium in the bag owned by an Iranian citizen. The person and his belongings were handed over to law-enforcement agencies," the report reads.
Border guards in the port of Novorossiysk put sentries aboard the Frederik Oldendorf ship that arrived from Ukraine under the Liberian flag. "Their mission is to prevent illegal migrants from going ashore. Two citizens of Guinea were found staying aboard the vessel illegally. The detainees are locked in a cabin under the captain's personal responsibility. They must leave the Russian port on the same vessel," the report reads.
A 25-year-old citizen of Azerbaijan was detained at the Derbent-Zheleznodorozhny checkpoint for trying to enter Russia with an alien passport.
Several citizens of Ukraine and Moldova were detained in the area of responsibility of the Kamensk-Shakhtinsky border guard detachment.
The directorate's border checkpoints detected over 30,000 persons with invalid documents last year. As many as 26,500 people were denied passage on legal grounds. Over 16,000 of them were potential illegal migrants from foreign countries.