The Ukrainian government has approved a budget for the construction of engineering equipment needed to fortify the country’s border with Russia. According to documents published on the state’s website, officials are allocating 4 billion hryvnia (about $250 million) to the so-called Wall project. The government expects to spend a quarter of these funds before the end of 2015.
The newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda says the plan concerns about 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of the Ukrainian-Russian border around Ukraine’s separatist-controlled areas in the east and Crimea. The “wall” will consist of anti-tank ditches, 17-meter-tall (55-feet-tall) observation towers, surveillance cameras, and a special alarm system for border guards.
Ukraine first announced plans to fortify its defenses along the border with Russia in June 2014, not long after Russia’s absorption of Crimea and the outbreak of hostilities in the Donbas.
In December 2014, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said the government would allocate 8 billion hryvnia (about $517 million at the time) to the wall. Construction would take four years, he said, and the state would finance all costs.
In February 2015, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Zubko said officials had removed certain elements from plan, reducing the project’s costs by half.