“We have never seen any tanks here” (article by Kommersant)
Oleg Mukhin, Andrey Tsvetkov, Belgorod
“We have never seen any tanks here”
Russians living on the border with Ukraine speak about international tensions
The international crisis created by the predictions of an escalation on the Russian-Ukrainian border has not affected the lives of Russians in the border regions, say Kommersant correspondents after visiting several checkpoints near Kharkov and in neighbouring villages. Crossing the border has not become more difficult, the number of security forces at checkpoints has not increased, and local residents see wolves more often than soldiers.
The Nekhoteyevka checkpoint is located on the four-lane Belgorod-Kharkov road. It is one of the largest checkpoints on the Russian-Ukrainian border, but few people have been using it in recent years. It is situated at the same distance from Belgorod as from Kharkov, only 40 kilometres. There are now hardly any vehicles on this clean road, which used to be very popular with the two cities’ residents. The traffic is only heavy on short stretches between the border and several Russian fuelling stations, where large off-road vehicles with Ukrainian licence plates drive to fill up their tanks and return home.
“Petrol costs twice as much in Ukraine,” said people in a nearby car park on the Russian side of the border. Many cars standing side by side have Ukrainian and Russian plates: crossing the border with a Ukrainian passport is easy, and the car park has become a meeting place for relatives. “We crossed the border easily; the Ukrainians barely glanced at our documents,” said the driver of an Infiniti car with Ukrainian plates, who was moving products into a Lada Priora with licence plates registered in Voronezh, Russia.
Two women got out of a Ford Focus with Ukrainian plates. Natalya said she was driving her mother home to Russia. She said there were no changes in the border crossing regime or any new requirements: “Since the pandemic broke out, they have been requesting explanations for driving to Ukraine. I have piles of copies of my documents, including even my birth certificate. It does not take long to check them.” According to Natalya, she and her acquaintances in Kharkov have not felt affected by the political tension: “Everything is quiet. People are doing business. There are only seven long vehicles here waiting to enter Ukraine, while the line is three kilometres long on the other side of the border. People are working, the same as usual.” Before parting, she added: “When I watch TV in the evening, I want to kill those who produce the news. Total gibberish!” He mother nodded in agreement.
Local taxi drivers meet in Café Wheel a few hundred metres from the Nekhoteyevka checkpoint. For 4,000 roubles, they offer to help you cross the border, but actually they only find Ukrainians who are ready to give you a seat in their cars for part of this sum. We saw them help people hitch a lift within 30 minutes. “It’s especially easy for women. Even if they don’t have relatives in Ukraine, we give them a stamped document from a Ukrainian healthcare facility saying that they require medical assistance. But the document must look authentic,” said one of the taxi drivers. He avoided saying how they help men cross the border.
The Russian border guards were not very talkative. “A Ukrainian passport or relatives in Ukraine” are enough to be able to cross the border, one said. He did not explain how you can prove that you have relatives.
Large factories, such as poultry and dairy farms and sugar mills, are located in the Belgorod Region near the Ukrainian border. The villages smell of mixed fodder, and there are many adverts near local shops about jobs at bread, sugar and other factories. Inside them you can see green posters with the name and telephone number of the border district police inspector and a request to “report suspicious vehicles and people.” “If you climb that hill, you will see the border fence,” said Galina, a shop assistant in the village of Arkhangelskoye. “It’s less than five kilometres away. But you won’t be able to climb the hill: the snow is too deep.” She is serving customers while sharing a story: “My relatives call me asking if we have tanks in the village. Of course, I tell them, we have nothing but tanks. Actually, we have never seen any tanks here.”
In the district centre, Shebekino, the only things that serve as reminders that the border is located seven kilometres away are the name of Kharkov Street and an old bus timetable for journeys to Kharkov: two buses per day, eight per week in total. “The last bus left for Kharkov five years ago. Nothing has changed since then,” we learned at the cash register. In an almost empty local shopping centre, a sales assistant showered us with offers of southern wines. “This sparkling wine is from Crimea, our Crimea,” Svetlana said. “Everything is very quiet here. I haven’t seen anyone in uniform for a long time. Being near to the border is not frightening. Who would want to invade us? I’m sure that we don’t want to invade anyone either. So, have no fear and buy this semi dry wine.”
There are signs warning of entry to the border area in many villages. But we haven’t seen a single patrol, not even in the village of Terezovka less than a kilometre from the border. A man who was walking his dog in Meshkovoye, a nearby village, told us that “Ukrainians never come here, but you can sometimes glimpse a border patrol.” Actually, we didn’t see anyone in the village, only a few kids playing in the snow near the local school. We entered a nearby branch of Sberbank, spanning several rooms of a dilapidated building where the windows were still intact. “It has become quiet here for so long, especially in winter,” Yelena said, wrapping herself in a shawl and a muffler. “People only work at the school and the recreation centre. Some take a bus to the pig farm, we call it the bacon barn.” She said that people don’t talk about politics in the village: “And what do people at your place say? That there must be tanks here? Come on! There are wolves prowling near the village – they get very hungry in the winter. We haven’t seen anyone else here.”
If you want to see military personnel, you need to drive to the district centre, Valuiki, where a number of military units were deployed several years ago. The troops deployed in other parts of the border region, for example Ostrogozhsk near Voronezh, remain in their barracks. “Is everything all right here?” we asked a non-commissioned corporal who was topping up his private car with fuel at the exit from Ostrogozhsk. “Yes, it’s okay. Don’t rush to hoard up food.”
