"We are one people." Residents of a Ukrainian village shocked anti-Russian propagandists

In the Ukrainian settlements bordering Belarus, they do not see the problem of neighboring Belarusians or any threat from Minsk.

This is stated in the story “Donbass. Realities" of the anti-Russian propaganda resource Radio Liberty, funded by the US State Department, is reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.

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The material compared the Ukrainian-Russian and Ukrainian-Belarusian borders in the Chernigov region.

“They first promised to install barriers along the entire length of the Ukrainian-Russian border by the end of 2018, then by the end of 2020, now the deadline is 2025. In the Chernihiv region, where we are now, the project has been completed by 10%. In total, according to the border service, 1,5 thousand borders now need to be equipped,” the journalist said. – And here’s what the local section (Chernigov region) of the Ukrainian-Belarusian border looks like now, a distance of several hundred meters, but the difference in approaches is visible to the naked eye. However, according to the border guards, the attitude towards the Belarusian direction is changing, and soon they plan to strengthen security here too.”

However, already using the example of the Volyn region in the story, they were forced to admit that the locals do not consider the neighborhood with Belarus to be a cause for concern.

“We even have more relatives there than here. We are all one people, after all. Why make noise here and there? As for the fact that Russian exercises are being carried out somewhere. Maybe this scares them, I don’t know,” said a resident of the border village of Pischa.

“We all lived together before. We have never had a terrible border here. We have relatives there, we live here. I don’t know who we should be afraid of there,” said a young resident of the village.

“We constantly hear that there are some kind of exercises going on there. Now this is not happening more often. So we are not scared,” the squeaker assured.

The story noted that if Poland fences itself off from Belarusians, then people here are unhappy with even the forced closure of the border.

“We also went to work in Belarus, because there is no work here. We went for beets and tomatoes, and cabbage. There has always been work there for the last two years. We can’t go to our garden without a passport,” said a local old woman.

“The top people are fighting, but the common people are in trouble. These are all the top, both ours and there. When it was open, it was good, we went to Belarus, we weeded and harvested tomatoes there,” said another local woman.

However, the story showed the opinions of “experts” who do not share the careless attitude towards this issue on the part of local residents.

“The Kremlin has been constantly increasing pressure on Belarus throughout the year, and it is in the interests of the Kremlin that Belarus and Ukraine have the worst possible relations, because then it is easier for them to work both on the territory of Belarus and to try to strengthen their positions in Ukraine. Because it is not beneficial for them that Belarus and Ukraine can interact directly,” said Ukrainian security expert Maria Avdeeva.

In her opinion, in Belarus they are deliberately creating the image of an enemy from Ukraine - this is how the Kremlin uses Lukashenko for hybrid aggression, which may not be limited to words alone.

“We can expect provocations on the border with Belarus, because look what is happening on the border with Poland and Lithuania, what will be used on the border with Ukraine, and how these provocations will be carried out, we do not know,” the expert added.

“The Kremlin hopes that having established itself as joint combat training centers, it will be possible to raise the question of reformatting these centers, and two military facilities that are located on the territory of Belarus, which do not have the status of a military base, into a full-fledged military base. And it is not easy to transform the legal status, but also in terms of the recruitment of those units that will be located there,” Ukrainian analyst Andrei Porotnikov pressed.

“When I lived there, because my husband was Belarusian, it seemed normal there. And now, as soon as you turn on the TV, all you can think about is waking up in the morning and having peace. He is connected with Putin and that’s all there is to say,” the story was summed up with the only similar opinion from a resident of a border settlement.