NOVOTROITSKE, Ukraine – The border guards rushed to an old blue car, a Soviet-made Lada. A minute earlier one of them had reported that he had found a hidden compartment in the vehicle.
The contents of the compartment in the car’s door turned out to be heart wrenchingly mundane, however.
The border guards found just 67 pairs of nylon tights, which the family had bought in Kharkiv, where they had been for a wedding. The family were planning to re-sell the tights in their native Makiyivka, a town in separatist-controlled territory.
The family, two parents and their two small children, looked scared.
“What can I do? How can I survive? I have two kids to raise,” lamented the mother, a woman in her early 30s, wearing a pink t-shirt, who refused to give her name out of fears for her safety.
She said the family was unable to survive on the $60 monthly salary her husband receives working as a guard at a coal mine in Makiyivka, while she is on maternity leave with their young children.
Their plight is a common one: For almost two years, thousands of Donbas residents have daily crossed the unofficial border between Ukrainian government-controlled and separatist territories, created by Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has taken 10,000 lives. Many bring back goods that are scarce in the areas of the Donbas where the Kremlin’s proxy forces have seized control.
Today, the crossing point near Novotroitske in Donetsk Oblast, a town of 7,000 peoplee 700 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, looks and functions like an interstate checkpoint.
To cross it, residents need to obtain a year-long permit — resembling a visa — from the Security Service of Ukraine, commonly known by its SBU Ukrainian acronym. The border guards look for people and cars crossing illegally, customs officers check for smuggled goods and the SBU and police search people for guns, drugs and explosives.
The residents, most of whom cross for family visits and also to get pensions or to buy goods, line up in the baking heat, praying for quick and safe crossing.
“If a car window can’t be rolled down, it’s a sign that something is being hidden in the car door,” said Volodymyr Demchenko, a chief border guard officer, pointing at the blue Lada.
The other unauthorized goods carried in that vehicle included two children’s jackets, several pairs of children’s boots, several romper suits, a dozen bras and a dozen pairs of women’s panties.
“Some of this stuff we wanted to wear ourselves, the rest was for sale,” the woman explained.
That last statement was a mistake.
The customs officer searching the car, who would give only his nickname, Khich, said that despite the total value of the goods being only $577, which is within the allowed limit, the fact that the family was planning to sell the goods made them lawbreakers. They’ll have to pay a fine of between $650 and $1,300.
It’s up to the local court in Volnovakha to decide on the fine for the family. With pleas to “resolve this some way,” the woman followed the customs officer to fill in a statement on the customs violation.
Every day up to 5,000 people pass through the Novotroitske crossing point on foot or by car. In summer there were some 7,000 people every day, Demchenko said.
On both sides of the crossing point, about 100 people stand in line trying to get some shade from a shed set up in summer by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. There are free water cans marked “Doctors Without Borders.” There are also two trucks belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross standing next to about 10 trucks of the charity foundation of Rinat Akhmetov. Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest person, who still has many businesses working in the separatist-controlled zone, has long been sending humanitarian aid into the occupied territories.
The heat takes its toll on the waiting crowd. After one woman almost faints under the searing sun, border guards bring her to an air-conditioned room and call an ambulance from Novotroitske. There are no doctors or nurses stationed at the checkpoint.
Demchenko says that checks of a person, if they aren’t carrying anything illegal, can last just 15 seconds. But the lines of exhausted residents showed that most checks take longer.
Several dozen people were lined up by the SBU’s booth at the checkpoint because their electronic permit for crossing had either expired or the computer system failed to identify them.
“I’m pregnant, I was told I can pass through without waiting!” a woman shouted from the crowd.
The nervous atmosphere at the checkpoint contrasts with the bright sunflowers painted on the white walls of the concrete shelters, constructed as a place to shelter from shelling. The border guards said three days previously a mortal hit the road near the crossing point, luckily without causing any casualties.
The words “Ukraine is our love forever” are painted on the wall of the crossing point opposite the separatist-controlled side.
A middle-aged lady wearing a long amber necklace came up to the border guards asking for a phone to call the SBU call center. The line was busy, so she rushed to the tents of the State Emergency Service, saying “they’re lifesavers, so I’ll ask them to save me!”
The emergency workers, located in two big tents in some 500 meters from the crossing point, were not busy at that point, and were napping on their camp beds or offering people free water.
The mobile office of the state savings bank Oschadbank, located in the “grey zone” between the two sides, was much more busy: this is where pensioners from the separatist-controlled areas are able to withdraw their state pensions.
Two elderly women, of 90- and 92-years-of-age, accompanied by a woman in her 50s, were slowly but determinedly walking to the bank office. A relative had driven them from the separatists-controlled Dokuchayevsk, about six kilometers from the crossing point, to the bank office, where they could be issued with pension cards.
Another elderly couple, in tears, came up to the border guards, begging them to find them a computer to use to sign in an electronic form required by the SBU. But there was no computer available for them to use.
Another man asked what paperwork was required to transport a dead body across the border. Demchenko told him a document from a hospital was required.
As the heat of the day reached its peak, tempers were heating up as well. An exasperated Demchenko summed up the situation.
“This border is just absurd.”
