By Biodun Busari
The Ukrainian government has banned top public officers and lawmakers including women from traveling abroad during the war with Russia.
Andriy Demchenko, the spokesman for Ukraine’s border guard service, disclosed this as the mechanism instituted last week, according to AFP on Monday.
Demchenko said the affected Ukrainians can only leave the war-torn country as part of a work mission,
“They can now only leave as part of a work mission,” he said.
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Since the invasion of Russian troops ordered by President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian men of fighting age were ordered to remain in the country barring a few exclusions.
Under the new measure, senior officials will only be able to travel abroad if they are visiting their children, or in the event of medical reasons or following the death of a loved one, said Demchenko.
The ban also extends to women civil servants as well as local deputies.
Ukrainian lawmaker Iryna Gerashchenko criticized what she called a “populist decision”, stressing that around 15,000 local deputies were women and some worked as volunteers.
“At first, the authorities called on everyone who could to leave for the winter with their children, now they are not allowed to leave,” she said on Facebook.
“The authorities continue to take thoughtless steps that have nothing to do with the fight against abuses.”
According to AFP, the measure was adopted after several officials were accused of embarking on vacation abroad including Ukraine’s deputy prosecutor Oleksiy Symonenko who had gone on holiday to Marbella, a popular Spanish resort.
Symonenko was among officials who resigned last week in Ukraine’s biggest political shakeup following a series of corruption allegations.
An influential media outlet on Friday reported that former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko had spent a vacation in a luxury villa in the United Arab Emirates.
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