The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has banned entrance into the country to former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev for a period of five years.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has confirmed Thursday it has banned entrance into the country to former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev for a period of five years after he made positive statements about Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
On Monday, Anton Herashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine's interior minister, said he had sent a proposal to the country's foreign minister and the SBU head to ban Gorbachev from entering Ukraine after the former Soviet leader said the Soviet Union would still exist with Crimea as part of it if he was still in power.
"There have been an awful lot of phone calls from the media in regard to Gorbachev’s entry ban. We have blocked his entrance for five years in the interests of providing state security, in particular for his public support of the military annexation of Crimea," the spokesman for the Ukrainian Security Service, Elena Hitlyanskaya said on Facebook.
Commenting on earlier threats to block his entry to Ukraine, Gorbachev said earlier in the week: "Whatever, I am not traveling and will not travel there."
In March 2014, Crimea decided to secede from Ukraine and become a part of Russia after more than 96 percent of the local electorate who voted in a referendum on the issue backed the move. Kiev has not recognized the public vote, claiming that the territory was annexed.
