'War?! I Want A Post Office': In A Remote Ukrainian Border Village, More Pressing Worries Than A New Russian Invasion
by Mike Eckel and Maryan Kushnir, Radio Free Europe, February 13, 2022
BLAHOVISHCHENKA, Ukraine -- Out Svitlana Sukharevska’s back door, under the laundry on the line, past the outhouse and the muddy paddock where she used to keep a cow and a couple of chickens, just beyond the tree line about 100 meters away is the country that is threatening her own country, Ukraine.
Russia is the country that surrounds her village on three sides and forbids the locals to swim in the Povna River that marks the border, like she used to do in the summer as a child. It also bars them from fishing in the eddies -- and now forces farmers to drive twice the usual distance to sell their winter wheat, barley, or feed crops.
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War doesn’t top the list of her worries, though.
“It’s the damn school bus. It keeps breaking down,” she says. “We’re supposed to make our kids walk, what, 10 kilometers to school? In the cold? There are wolves, foxes.”
The Ukrainian capital is a distant notion for the 100 or so villagers who remain in what’s left of Blahovishchenka, a nub of a settlement that sticks into the neighboring Russian province of Rostov like a bent thumb. Here, Russian TV broadcasts are the norm; signals for Ukrainian channels are too weak. Until recently, Internet service came from across the border, too.
But a new Russian invasion is also a distant notion. True, the border is a constant reminder of a foreign country out the back door. The main road out of town runs past barbed wire, soil raked for detecting footprints, warning signs, an anti-tank trench, and one fortified border guard post.
“War? No one believes it here,” said Oleksandr Kopov, 60, who was born here and was visiting his son-in-law and grandson, Sasha, who also wishes the school bus was working.
“Why don’t I believe it? Well, in 2014, when this whole mess began, in Ukraine, the road was still open, the border was open, we went back and forth without checkpoints,” he said. “We had tanks here, National Guard everywhere, soldiers.
Here at every field, there was heavy equipment,” he said, referring to Ukrainian forces. “Now we don’t see anything. Nothing. Totally empty. If they were hiding something, we’d see it. You can’t hide equipment from the villagers.”
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Like Sukharevska, Serhiy Ivanovskiy, who lives six houses down the street, said he has more pressing concerns.
“No one needs us here. Тhey don’t give a damn about us. Not in Kyiv, not in Russia,” said Ivanovskiy, 43, who feeds and clothes five children -- the youngest is 3, the eldest 14 -- by growing and selling feed crops for livestock.
“There’s nothing to buy here,” he said. “And there’s nowhere to sell.”
He and other farmers here and in the next town down the road, Talove, used to be able to truck their sunflower seeds about a 45-minute drive east to the Russian town of Millerovo, to be pressed for cooking oil. Now, Ivanovskiy said, it’s about a two-hour drive southwest to Luhansk, the regional capital.
These days, the more problematic border is in that direction.
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