Arms smuggling on the rise on volatile Russia-Ukraine border
Ukraine and its Western allies say Russian troops and military hardware have criss-crossed border.
DONETSK, Russia (AFP) - Russian border guard Alexander Mishchenko was on patrol one July morning near the country s frontier with Ukraine when he eyed two suspicious men.
When he attempted to check their documents, one of the men took out a pistol and opened fire, wounding the 29-year-old officer. The pair then drove off to the border, where they abandoned their vehicle and disappeared.
The incident in late July, which was confirmed to AFP by the border service, occurred in the southern Rostov region, near Ukraine s rebel Lugansk People s Republic (LNR), one of two majority-Russian speaking regions that broke away from Ukrainian government control over a year ago.
Ukraine and its Western allies say Russian troops and military hardware have criss-crossed the border unhindered over the past year, to help the separatists in eastern Ukraine battle Kiev government forces.
But as the conflict rumbles on despite a February ceasefire, officials on the Russian side of the frontier say crime rates there have ticked up as illegal firearms seep across from the rebel enclaves of Donetsk and Lugansk.
"Statistically, the flow of weapons that crosses over to us is three times higher than before the conflict," said Yury Tarasenko, the mayor of Donetsk, a Russian border town that shares the same name as the breakaway region in eastern Ukraine s industrial heartland.
The struggling municipality of dusty rosebushes and a grand total of eight traffic lights backs onto a 37-kilometre (23-mile) stretch of separatist-held Lugansk territory.
Begging for more security
"That is a lot," Tarasenko told AFP, referring to the length of the border to be protected. "There is no barbed wire or any real barriers... and you can t place a border guard every other metre."
One village sits smack on the frontier -- one side of the street is Russian, the other is Ukrainian.
The villagers "have begged (the municipality) to increase security," he said.
More border guards have been sent in from other regions, but it s not enough to stop the weapons trafficking.
"They still find security holes" to smuggle arms, he said. "Then they try to take them further inside Russia. Some do it for business and some maybe have other ideas."
The Rostov region shares 400 kilometres (250 miles) of border with Ukraine s breakaway areas.
Crime has risen in the region in the first six months of 2015, with the number of recorded criminal cases up by 19.5 percent compared to last year, regional police chief Andrei Larionov told local television recently, without giving specific details.
Trouble spreading
Public court records show several cases of people crossing the border illegally with firearms and ammunition.
One man crossed into the Rostov region with a Kalashnikov rifle, a grenade launcher and a half-dozen loaded magazines last October before being apprehended a kilometre from the frontier.
In another case, a woman carrying a Kalashnikov and explosives crossed the border on foot, using a pedestrian bridge over a river. The weapons were later found in a taxi company s office.
Trouble has also spread beyond the border region: authorities this week arrested a former rebel on charges of shooting dead two policemen near Moscow late last year after returning from Ukraine.
Russia s security forces say they are moving to prevent crime by beefing up border fortifications.
In May, the Federal Security Service (FSB), which oversees border security, said it had dug 100 kilometres of ditches and put up 40 kilometres of fences near the frontier with Ukraine.
The measures have been implemented "to ensure the stability of (the Rostov region) as well as to stop illegal weapons trafficking", the border service said in a statement published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta state daily.
While the FSB declined to specify whether the border was reinforced near rebel-controlled areas, monitors from the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) confirmed that security has been ramped up at border crossings from LNR territory.
"We have observed an increase of security" this year, and checks of people crossing into Russia take longer, said Paul Picard, the head of OSCE observers at checkpoints on the Russian side.
In addition, there have been more drills by border guards since March, after the separatists agreed a ceasefire with Kiev, he told AFP.
One of two checkpoints the mission observes installed equipment to scan trucks two months ago, he said.
Tarasenko, the Donetsk mayor, said he would take all the resources he can get.
Thousands of refugees displaced by fighting still live in the area, and are stretching his already meagre budget, he said.
The border crossing now has queues of up to 10 hours as Ukrainians pour into Russia to do their shopping because of high prices in rebel-held zones.
The main crime to have risen is weapons trafficking, the mayor said, but some petty theft has been recorded by hard-up Ukrainians who have escaped the fighting.
"Our town was never prepared for any of this," he said of the conflict across the border. "We were not ready."
