Colonel General Borys Oleksiyenko, head of the State Border Guard Committee (Derzhkomkordon), had a working meeting with his German counterpart Walter Sperner, in the course of which a shipment of special software was transferred to completely equip three checkpoints on Ukraine’s border. The equipment costs a total of DM 500,000 and will soon be hooked up to a special network, including data-reading units and special servers with computerized names on wanted lists. Ukrainian border guard authorities will thus be able to immediately identify and apprehend persons with fake identification and criminals fleeing arrest; at the same time, the new equipment will simplify and expedite passport control procedures.
It should be noted that Germany has supplied Ukraine with such equipment worth a total of DM 5.6 million since 1991. Mr. Oleksiyenko said that the German contributions make it possible to annually re-equip three or four checkpoints, and that this is already yielding fruit; Ukrainian border guard authorities have apprehended several hundred dangerous criminals. Thus, a killer on the Interpol wanted list was arrested at Boryspil Airport.
INCIDENTALLY
Last week, Germany contributed DM 220,000 to the Oles Honchar Fund for the Revival of National Relics to restore the interior of the Assumption Cathedral at the Kyiv Pecherska Lavra Monastery of the Caves. German Ambassador to Ukraine Dietmar St Я demann stated during the ceremony of presentation that the German government is contributing DM 200,000 to the fund as a sign of gratitude for the Bach archives, preserved so many years and being of such great value to German culture, reports Interfax Ukraine. DM 20,000 came from the German-Ukrainian Forum and was handed the fund’s leader Petro Tronko by former Ambassador Eberhard Heyken. This money will be used in restoring the cathedral’s iconostasis.
