CHAPLYNKA, Ukraine – Valentina Fadyrova, a 34-year-old woman from Armyansk in Crimea, used to be able to hop into her car and take a half-hour drive to the market in Chaplynka in neighboring Kherson Oblast.
Then Russia invaded and annexed Ukraine’s peninsula, and Fadyrova found herself living in a de facto border zone, having to negotiate two sets of border checkpoints whenever she goes on a shopping run.
“It’s as if I suddenly lived in another country where I don’t belong,” Fadyrova said.
“Because I’m from Crimea and want to travel to Ukraine, (the Ukrainians) treat me as if I’m some kind of terrorist,” Fadyrova told the Kyiv Post as Ukrainian soldiers search her car.
“And a Russian soldier once asked me why I was traveling to Ukraine. I told him that it’s my home country, and the Russian border guards then threatened not to let me through anymore. ‘You’re home country is Russia now,’ they told me.”
In addition to the border crossing points, Fadyrova since Sept. 20 has had to pass through yet another checkpoint – an informal one set up by Crimean Tatar activists in cooperation with the ultranationalist Right Sector organization, which is enforcing a blockade of vehicles carrying heavy goods in and out of the peninsula.
Many of the now-blockaded trucks had been carrying food into Crimea. People there are starting to feel the effect of the newest checkpoint, which the government in Kyiv has neither officially endorsed nor opposed.
“There’s just no food in Armyansk,” Fadyrova said. She blames the Ukrainian government for supporting the blockade, while adding that Russia isn’t doing enough to take care of Crimean residents.
“The food that is there comes in via Russia, but it’s extremely expensive. It feels like torture to those who just aren’t able to afford basic needs,” Fadyrova said.
Food sold in mainland Ukraine is half the price than in occupied Crimea. So the Ukrainian-held town of Chaplynka, which sits in the semi-arid south of Kherson Oblast, has seen a rise in the number of people traveling from Crimea to purchase food. But the town of 10,000 souls, which has a single cooperative supermarket and a cooperative market, can hardly cope with the influx of new customers, Fadyrova said.
The bumpy road that runs south out of Chaplynka towards the new border with Crimea used to be busy with day-trippers in November, who would drive south to get the last of the Crimean sun before winter set in. Now, it’s only shoppers who make the trip, and because of the blockade, there are no trucks rumbling down the road, which cuts through parched, abandoned farmland.
Right Sector volunteer soldiers have set up camps at the side of the road, overlooking some of the desiccated grain fields. Nobody is allowed to take photographs of the camps, and the soldiers have been forbidden to talk to the press.
But one of the Right Sector soldiers agrees to talk, on the condition that his full name is not published because he is not authorized to speak publicly.
The soldier, Dima, a 21-year-old native of Poltava, said he had been a biology student before joining Right Sector’s volunteer battalion.
“We’re going to stop trucks entering Crimea for as long as it remains occupied and (Russia) is oppressing the people that live there,” Dima said. Two of his fellow soldiers nodded their heads in agreement.
The Crimean Tatars and Right Sector have set up checkpoints on all of the main routes into Crimea, including roads that from Chaplynka, Chongar and Stavky, preventing trucks from entering the Russian-occupied territory. Government forces, while not involved in the blockade, have allowed Right Sector soldiers to turn away the trucks, and now, almost two months after the blockade started, the roads are empty of goods-carrying vehicles.
“Every truck driver, every company, knows about the blockade,” Dima said. “We’re just checking regular cars here at the moment, but we can’t leave. If we leave, it means the trucks will return and the Ukrainian government army will allow them to cross into Crimea.”
While goods suppliers and ordinary Crimeans like Fadyrova might be fed up with the blockade, Right Sector’s actions may have won the group more public support.
According to a recent poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, support for the Right Sector group has grown to 6.4 percent following the imposition of the Crimea blockade. As a political party, Right Sector garnered only 1.8 percent in the October 2014 parliamentary elections.
Dima believes that Right Sector is doing what the government should have been doing all along.
“All of a sudden Russia took over Crimea. Where was our government? Nowhere. Ukrainian army soldiers based in Sevastopol left in fear. They should have fought. The real patriots are Right Sector, and we’ve always been doing what’s best for our country. Where would the Ukrainian army be in Pisky without Right Sector?”
One of Dima’s comrades, Anton, who also refused to give his full name because he wasn’t allowed to talk to the press, then chipped in with his advice for the Ukrainian government.
“Tell your army to do what Right Sector is doing. Block those trucks, and don’t just rely on Right Sector. Put pressure on Russia. We’re the ones that are doing that now, whereas we’re only volunteers. The pressure should come from the central government. They should all say just one thing: F**k Russia!”
Kyiv Post staff writer Stefan Huijboom can be reached at [email protected]
