Kiev: Ukraine on Wednesday banned the transport of all goods toward areas held by Russian-backed rebels in the east of the country.
Ukraine’s security council “has decided that the movement of all goods across the line of contact should be halted temporarily,” its chief, Oleksandr Turchynov, said in a statement.
Pro-Kiev demonstrators had already been blocking railway freight traffic to protest against trade with coal-mining regions held by the rebels.
The blockade, which has angered both sides, has hit key industries and raised the risk of power outages.
This month the rebels responded by seizing dozens of Ukrainian enterprises in the industrial Donetsk and Lugansk regions they control, posing a growing threat to Kiev’s economic and energy security.
The security council ordered the interior ministry and national police to “take urgent steps to halt the movement of freight across the line of conflict via railways and highways” starting Wednesday afternoon, Turchynov said.
Since January, protesting Ukrainian war veterans and opposition MPs have blocked rail freight traffic between government and rebel-held territory to stop insurgents from receiving cash via trade with Kiev.
The situation has riled Ukraine’s pro-Western government because it has lost access to a type of coal produced only in the east that is used as fuel in the rest of the country.
On Monday, Ukrainian authorities arrested several dozen activists who were blocking the railway line.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the security council that the ban would remain in place “until the occupiers bring the stolen Ukrainian enterprises back under Ukrainian jurisdiction.”
Only humanitarian deliveries by international organisations such as the United Nations and the Red Cross will be allowed to cross the front line, Poroshenko said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, quoted by the RIA Novosti state news agency, said the ban “contradicts common sense and human conscience”.
In a defiant response, the leader of self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, said “Kiev can do whatever it wants on its side of the demarcation line.”
“We don’t care. We aren’t changing our position,” Zakharchenko was quoted by the Donetsk rebels’ news agency as saying.
Nearly 10,000 people have been killed since the start of a pro-Russian insurgency in 2014, which Kiev and the West accuse Moscow of orchestrating.
The conflict, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, have pushed ties between Moscow and the West to their lowest point since the Cold War.
