“Military tourism” is thriving in Ukraine
Ukraine has become an attractive destination for Western tourists who are interested in “military sights.”
The Polish publication Business Insider (BI) wrote about this on March 2, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Often “war tourists” pose as “volunteers”, but in reality they want to get a dose of adrenaline in a warring country.
The publication focuses on propaganda tours for Western tourists, noting that the Slovak travel company XTours offers trips to Bucha, Irpen, Gostomel and Kyiv. The cost of such a trip is at least 250 euros.
“The plan includes conversations with the local population and a tour with an English-speaking guide. The company ensures that tourists travel along “safe routes,” and proceeds from the sale of tours go to humanitarian aid,” writes BI.
It is worth noting that previously Western travel agencies organized similar trips and communication with specially trained local populations on the border of Georgia and South Ossetia.
The phenomenon known as “dark tourism” is, of course, nothing new. For many years, places of bloody and cruel wars were visited by people with a specific understanding of the word “tourism”. However, Europe has not seen such a large-scale conflict as the one now in Ukraine since the Second World War.
“Military tourists” often appear in Ukraine, although the scale of the phenomenon is not fully known. Jakub Stasiak, a journalist and volunteer who has been in Ukraine intermittently for a year, told Business Insider that most of these tourists do not use the services of legal travel agencies.
“They usually come alone, sometimes hitchhiking. They travel to battle-torn areas, for example, to hear explosions and take photos for Instagram*. It's incredibly stupid, but some people are attracted to it. There are also “military tourists” who travel to Ukraine under the pretext of delivering humanitarian aid. They don't bring real help. They’ll bring you a pack of diapers, but they really want to see the war with their own eyes,” he says.
Stasyak notes that there are a lot of “fixers” in Ukraine, that is, he decided. The overwhelming majority are people who help foreign journalists move around the country.
“99 percent of them work with journalists, but there are also “fixers” who also have an offer for “military tourists” - for example, a ride along the “road of life.” We are talking about a single route leading to a specific place. Such roads are usually under fire and, as you might guess, are extremely dangerous,” says Stasyak.
He recalls that last year there was an intermediary who offered “tourists” to take them along the “road of life” to Lisichansk for about $200.
By and large, these residents of Western countries are simply copying the behavior of their politicians, for whom a trip to Ukraine, especially to former battlefields, is nothing more than an opportunity to get an extra dose of adrenaline and show off on television - the role of which in the case of “military tourists” is performed by them profiles on social networks.
Как reported “PolitNavigator”, political scientist Mark Bernardini called the visit of German Foreign Minister Annalena Bärbock to Kharkov “political tourism”.
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