MINSK, 13 November (BelTA) – The demarcation of the Belarusian-Ukrainian border in the Chernobyl exclusion zone will begin in February 2019, BelTA learned from the website of the State Border Committee of Belarus.
A regular session of the Belarusian-Ukrainian demarcation commission took place in the Ukrainian city of Zhitomir. The sides summed up results of demarcation work in the field in 2018 and agreed to start the demarcation of the border in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in February 2019.
BelTA reported earlier that the Belarusian-Ukrainian border demarcation plan for 2018-2026 was approved at the 17th session of the Belarusian-Ukrainian demarcation commission in Lutsk, Ukraine on 26-27 June. The practical border demarcation work began in 2014 when temporary border signs were erected in line with the delimitation map. The Belarusian-Ukrainian intergovernmental agreement on approving the state border demarcation regulation came into force on 25 November 2014.
Demarcation work is being done in several sections of the Belarusian-Ukrainian border simultaneously. The border's position on the map has to be defined first. Then the border is marked in the field using border signs.
The Belarusian-Ukrainian state border is 1,084.2km long, including 758.3km on land and 325.9km on water (along the Dnieper River, the Sozh River, and the Pripyat River). The border section that cuts across the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is about 120km long. The territory near the border is hard to travel through. Large areas are covered with thick forests, swamps, small lakes, and a well-developed network of amelioration canals, most of which have been out of order for a long time.
