Direct bus transportation of passengers to Crimea and the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions is illegal, Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Yuriy Lavreniuk has said at a meeting of the State Service of Ukraine for Transport Safety in Kyiv.

Head of the service Mykhailo Noniak, in turn, gave the following example: mini vans with up to eight seats, which are not licensed by the service, go to Crimea.

"We know there are such facts. Together with the State Border Guard Service, the Ukrainian Security Service we also conduct raids at the checkpoints in Kherson region. We are working on the so called carriers. All other legal carriers, which have the license, follow the route, go only to the checkpoints, afterwards passengers pass to the annexed territory of Crimea on foot, and then go by the so called Crimean transport," he said.

According to Noniak, the same applies to the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Lavreniuk added in general such traffic is a joint agreement between concerned passengers and drivers.