Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the Ukrainian government are considering closing the border with Russia and announced plans for the Ukraine to join the EU by 2020.

A rapid decline in relations between the two ex-Soviet nations and a rapid escalation in tensions has been occurring ever since Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in April of this year.

Russia denies using heavy weapons in Eastern Ukraine and says satellite images from NATO are nothing more than fabrications to make Russia to back NATO’s expansion toward the Ukraine-Russia border.

Andriy Kucherov, a spokesman for the Ukraine’s state border service, stated in a telephone interview that the instructions were originally given by the Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council in August to limit future border crossings between the two nations to passenger flights and rail service.

Kucherov said, “such traffic would be easier to control.”

He went on to state that no other official security measures have yet been taken for passenger cars crossing the border. He also said that the checkpoints that were closed are “ones that had long been under attack by the rebels from the Russian side of the border.

“The rest of the Ukrainian-Russian border is operating as before,” Kucherov said.