Lieutenant Colonel Sergey Oleynichenko
Assistant to the Chief of the Border Guard Detachment – Head of the Department for International Co-operation, Podilsk Border Detachment

Being a Border Guard, protecting your Motherland is a responsible business, especially for the Podilsk Border Detachment. We have an area of responsibility of 336km, including about 85% of the Transnistrian segment of the border.

The main problem in our sector is the absence of a recognized neighboring State. In practical terms, that means no contacts with the other side. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of the Ukraine-Moldova border, where we regularly exchange information with the Border Police and conduct joint patrolling. Here, the information and legal vacuum greatly complicates the work.

I’ve been a Border Guard for over 24 years, and have worked with border control, green border protection and training of special units. When the Department for International Co-operation was created in 2005, I was interested to try a new path for myself. I deal with the co-operation with various international structures such as OSCE Monitoring Mission, Frontex, EUBAM, US Department of Defense and US Department of Energy.

With Ukraine’s course of European integration, adapting to the EU’s practices has become a priority. Co-operation with EUBAM is important for this, and it is my responsibility to organise our joint work at this border segment. If the Mission makes recommendations, I help to ensure they are introduced.

The Mission’s Field Office located in Podilsk makes our co-operation easier. We meet every day to exchange information, conduct joint assessments and plan monitoring of the border.

I appreciate EUBAM’s hands-on support to apply the new approaches to border management. Our Border Guards receive very useful on-the-job mentoring from the Mission’s experts, such as on conducting risk assessments and analysis.

Before last year, when we received access to Interpol databases, the Mission helped us to check real-time information on international databases. That had a major effect on our ability to detect cross-border crime.