Yatsenyuk created hell on the Russian-Ukrainian border

Starting Monday, in the Kharkiv region, it is possible to cross the Ukrainian-Russian border in only four places: these are the Goptovka and Pletenevka checkpoints (international), as well as Chugunovka and Peski (interstate). The remaining crossing points are closed due to the fact that Yatsenyuk’s Cabinet of Ministers decided to terminate the agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on small border traffic.

From March 1, Russian citizens are allowed into the territory of Ukraine only with international passports and in the presence of an invitation prepared according to the form. For Ukrainian citizens, nothing has changed formally, but crossing the border at Goptovka has become much more difficult and longer.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

The bus schedule is not observed, and tickets have become scarce. Buses travel between Kharkov and Belgorod instead of the stated three hours, taking five or even more hours. On other days, cars have to travel the distance between the neighboring border checkpoints “Goptovka” and “Nekhoteevka” for 10-16 hours. Let me remind you that before the appearance in these parts of not only cars and buses, but also the railway, stagecoaches from the provincial Kharkov to the provincial Belgorod took no more than five hours, and on a cart with a gelding this distance was covered in 7 hours. In Soviet times, before the appearance of the border, buses and trains traveled 75 kilometers between two regional centers with all stops in one and a half to two hours.

Who suffered the most from the closure of local checkpoints? First of all, residents of border villages and towns. Now a grandmother from Ukraine, in order to visit her grandchildren in a neighboring village in the Belgorod region, needs not to walk or hitch a ride for a couple of kilometers, but to get to the nearest open (still!) border barrier. That is, first get to Kharkov, Dvurechnaya or Volchansk, and from there to the same Goptovka or other checkpoints.

Russian relatives not only need to get to the point, but also have a foreign passport with them (and as of March 1, no more than 15% of residents of the border regions of the Russian Federation had one, and it cannot be issued in a day) and an invitation. However, even this package of documents, drawn up in accordance with all the rules, does not guarantee crossing the border of Ukraine. Russian border guards warn residents of nearby villages that Russians are not allowed on the other side of the border. And they turn out to be right in many cases: their Ukrainian colleagues wrap up double-headed eagle passport holders without any explanation.

Who benefits from this change in order? Certainly not to local markets, where cross-border retail and small wholesale trade will fade away. And not to those enterprises in the border regions, whose trucks with goods now stand idle at the border much longer due to the increased flow of cars. And not for minibus drivers, who are forced to reduce the number of trips per day.

Then who?

Only to those who build an impenetrable wall with towers and minefields between indivisible territories. Moreover, the Great Wall of China is not taken as a basis, where almost every tower had a passage for traders and travelers. And not the Berlin Wall, where the pass system was clear and transparent. Here is a completely different example - a wall running along the 38th parallel between the north and south of Korea, which in sixty years no more than three thousand residents of neighboring villages crossed to meet with relatives.

In the area of ​​Kharkov and Belgorod there is the 50th parallel, which has always been passable and passable. So is it worth adopting the Korean experience?