Situation on Ukrainian-Polish border escalating - Kiev

MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - Polish protesters and police are stopping buses from Ukraine traveling to and from Poland, and passengers are detained without explanations, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Restoration Alexander Kubrakov said on Monday.

"Unpleasant news is coming from the blocked Polish border. Protesters and police are stopping buses traveling to and from Poland. Passengers are detained without explanations," Ukrainian media quoted him as saying on social media on Monday.

Kubrakov said that such actions towards Ukrainian citizens are unacceptable. "The attempts to make them hostages of the protest seem irrelevant for the civilized world," Kubrakov said.

The Ukrainian consul immediately left for the Yagodin-Dorohusk border checkpoint, media reported, citing Ukrainian Ambassador to Poland Vasily Zvarich.

"The consul of the Ukrainian Consulate General in Lublin immediately went to the scene following the reports on groundless delays of passenger buses by Polish protesters in front of the border checkpoint in Dorohusk," Zvarich said on social media.

For his part, Ukrainian State Border Service spokesman Andrei Demchenko said that Polish farmers were blocking traffic on the highways leading to five checkpoints on the border with Ukraine.

"Polish farmers are blocking five directions [...]. On those directions, where traffic is still blocked or traffic for trucks is becoming more difficult as of this morning. There were 1,700 trucks standing in line, with most of them at the Yagodin checkpoint," Demchenko said during a telethon on Monday, as reported by Ukrainian media.

He also said that the protesting farmers do not pass trucks that are traveling from Ukraine to Poland across two checkpoints, Yagodin and Shegini. "And in this direction they pass quite a small number of trucks that are traveling from Poland to Ukraine," Demchenko said.

Demchenko also said that the Polish border guards informed on Monday morning that the protesters have also decided not to pass trucks that are traveling from Ukraine to Poland across the Ugrinov checkpoint, and in the opposite direction they will pass around four trucks per hour.

He said that overnight from March 8 to March 9, Polish farmers stopped blocking the route across the Krakovets-Korczowa checkpoint, the workload on it has markedly increased since then, and the queue has formed there, as well. "During these last days we see the intensity of traffic exactly across this checkpoint [...]. Hence, the intensity there is quite high with the possibility of crossing the border in both directions. However, of course, the queue remains in this direction too. As of this morning, there are around 600 trucks there," Demchenko said.