On Thursday, June 13, border guards in Odesa region detained a truck carrying 41 men who were trying to illegally cross the border with Moldova, the press service of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine has said.

"Border guards in Odesa region stopped a truck with 41 'passengers'. The driver of the grain truck was not transporting grain at all, but a group of violators to the border. The 'tourists' turned out to be representatives of twelve different regions of the country," it said on Friday.

Administrative protocols were drawn up against the violators, and as for the two defendants involved in organizing the illegal transfer, they face criminal liability.

Spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service Andriy Demchenko said on the national telethon that the vehicle was stopped a few kilometers from the border.

"In the future, most likely, this group could be divided into smaller ones. Or the criminal organizers would come up with some other way to move them across the border in the direction of Moldova," he said.

According to Demchenko, attempts to illegally cross the border continue daily, and the organizers are becoming more daring.

"We detain such persons. We should not call them draft dodgers, they are, first of all, violators of the state border, because some of them may not even fall under the category of mobilization, being less than 25 years old," he said.