The government commissions of Ukraine and Russia have signed in Sumy a final protocol on Ukrainian-Russian border delimitation. Under the document, all the 1925 kilometers of land border between the two states have been agreed upon and plotted on a common map. It took more than three years to negotiate the border delimitation. Addressing a press conference, Yury Serheyev, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, noted that the commissions made the final decision taking into account the ideas and proposals of frontier district and oblast leaders. “This does not mean,” Mr. Serheyev pointed out, “that we borrowed the Moldovan option, when we traded territories with that state. In this case the two sides only corrected the borderline, granting certain concessions to each other.” Still to be done is drafting the border description, maps, and the text of a respective treaty. However, the heads of states will sign the latter only when both sides also delimit their sea borders. Ukraine and Russia have not yet reached a compromise on this, Serhiy KHANIN reports for The Day from Sumy.
