Border guards were the first to enter the battle in both 2014 and 2022
This was emphasized today by the representative of the State Border Service of Ukraine Andriy Kucherenko at the conference “Integration of Armed Structures in National Defense. Experience of Ukraine for Lithuania”, talking about the work of the State Border Service during the full-scale invasion.
“The border service is part of the security and defense sector, performing both law enforcement and defense functions. Almost 60% of the service is in the operational subordination of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” said Andriy Kucherenko.
According to him, the border guards, together with other Ukrainian defenders, are in the hottest directions, in particular, protecting the Bakhmut, Lyman and Avdievsky directions at these moments.
Currently, border guards protect the state border with the Russian Federation and Russia, and this is more than 3 thousand km. Since the beginning of the armed aggression, they have withstood more than 8,000 shelling, destroyed a significant amount of manpower and more than 200 units of enemy equipment.
Andriy Kucherenko stressed that border units on the de-occupied part of the border with Russia continue to serve directly on the state border under enemy fire on the front line.
Regarding the situation at the checkpoints, the representative of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine reported: “Since February 24, 2022 and as of the end of January 2023, 31.97 million people have been registered at the state border at checkpoints: 14.61 million to Ukraine, 17.36 million from Ukraine”.
