Russia Digs Ditches to Slow Inflow of Arms and Men From Ukraine
by Stepan Kravchenko
10:04 AM EDT
May 26, 2015
President Vladimir Putin is facing a new kind of blowback from the war in Ukraine: weapons and intruders flowing out of the conflict zone and into Russia.
Accused by the U.S. and its allies of backing the rebels with arms and men, Russia is now digging ditches to halt munitions and smugglers moving east across its western frontier. Russia has so far dug about 100 kilometers (60 miles) of trenches 4 meters wide and 2 meters deep in the Rostov region, which borders both of Ukraine’s self-declared republics, Donetsk and Luhansk, the Border Guards Service said.
“It was done to create obstacles against intruders and the illicit entry of arms,” Andrei Timofeev, a spokesman for the service, said by phone from Rostov on Tuesday.
About 60 attempts at incoming arms smuggling have been foiled this year, resulting in the detention of more than 130 people and the confiscation of about 30 landmines, 40 firearms, 100 artillery shells and 200 grenades, according to the government’s official newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta.
The weapons may end up in the hands of terrorists and criminal groups, particularly in the mainly Muslim region of the North Caucasus, where federal troops have been battling extremists for two decades, according to Anton Lavrov, an independent military analyst.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/russia-digs-ditches-to-slow-inflow-of-arms-and-men-from-ukraine
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