Last Wednesday a Kyiv-based mobile border security unit officially presented some waterborne vehicles and rescue equipment to coast guard and border security servicemen. The Coast Guard Fleet will now have two more Galeon-280 coast guard boats, 7 small UMS-600 cutters, 10 Galia-640, and fourteen small Heavy Duty 460-type boats with inflatable sponsons. The State Border Security Service of Ukraine purchased all this equipment with state funds. In addition to acquiring light and heavy boats, the border guards have also diversified their materiel with such rescue gear as rafts and life jackets supplied by the US government as part of the technical aid program.
The delivered equipment is of international origin: the boats were assembled at Kyiv’s Leninska Kuznia shipyard out of Polish, Japanese, Russian, and US components. According to Col.-Gen. Mykola Lytvyn, chief of the State Border Security Service of Ukraine, the watercraft are equipped with state-of-the-art radars and other equipment. They will be used by coast guard units stationed in Odesa, Izmail, Kerch, and Sevastopil. Light boats are mainly designed for inland water reservoirs and harbors.
The Coast Guard of the State Border Security Service of Ukraine guards sea and river borders, and defends this country’s sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone. In the first quarter of this year, coast guard ships and boats inspected a total of 13,500 vessels on passage routes and in fisheries. Twenty-three waterborne vehicles were apprehended for illegally crossing the state border and violating border-crossing and fishery regulations; the owners of these vessels were prosecuted. The guards seized and handed over to the fishery protection authorities 700 kg of fish, 6,050 meters of illegally cast nets, and two commercial trawl-nets.
