Over 3,600 Russian citizens were refused entry into Ukraine in the six months of 2016, Ukrainian State Border Service chief Viktor Nazarenko said.

"The procedure with documents for Russian citizens arriving in Ukraine has not changed. They can enter with their travel passports. Other issues concern second-tier control for the identification of citizens with risk status," he told Interfax-Ukraine in an exclusive interview.

In his words, this category includes Russian citizens aged from 18 to 55 years. "In the first phase of the hybrid warfare, they actively tried to get in Ukraine, and we refused entry to many of them. In 2014, 2.5 million Russian citizens came to Ukraine, in 2015 their number was already 1.3 million, and in the six months this year it is over 600,000," he said.

As for entry refusals, their number in 2014 was 16,500 citizens of Russia, whereas there were 10,800 Russians who were refused entry into Ukraine in 2015, and in the six months of 2016, it is over 3,600, he added.

Nazarenko stressed that such statistics show that fewer Russian citizens come to Ukraine. Russians have seen that control at the Ukrainian border is now strict, he said.