Between tanks and soldiers in the steppe that divides Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. “They call it the border of the three sisters but no one dares to cross it.” Putin’s exercises within eight days: we fear a surprise invasion
FROM THE ENCOUNTER IN SENKIVKA (UKRAINE). Less than a kilometer from the “Three Sisters” border, the village of Senkivka looks like a ghost town. Swept by the snowstorm that swallows and obliterates everything, the only signs that someone lives in this last outpost before the border are the glare in the windows of the few houses along provincial road 28. It is from here that, in the event of an attack, they would be forced to pass the Russian military means. Or the Belarusian ones. Surrounded by swamps and the impassable area – even by the Russians – of Chernobyl, the road leading to the pass is a single sheet of ice covered with fresh snow and tire tracks. Around it an endless expanse of whitewashed plain that merges with the sky, frozen swamps and woods. It takes four hours to travel 80 kilometers. It is the “gray zone”, as the Ukrainians call it, or the area of the Three Sisters, as the Russians call it, the exact point where Ukraine, Russia and Belarus meet and where the “Friendship Monument was erected in 1975. Which celebrated the link between the three Eastern Slavic peoples. Today it is the only crossing point in the world where there are three checkpoints at the same time. Nobody goes this far, nobody but Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and truck drivers headed north. The time on the phone updates to the Russian time zone, even if the territory is still Ukrainian. For two weeks the alert at the check-point has been raised. A long line of trucks waits in a queue in front of the barriers, heavy military vehicles pass in the opposite direction, towards Chernihiv. Before the new crisis with Moscow, the area was considered a no man’s land, 10,000 square meters without a homeland. It’s different now. The military guards the border, they have put up anti-tank barriers and, perhaps they say to scare those who arrive, that if you leave the main road you risk blowing up a mine.
It is forbidden to pass the check-point, it is forbidden to get out of the car, it is forbidden to take photographs, it is forbidden to ask questions. It is allowed to enter the small café housed in a wooden shack. “Take the cat away,” says a Russian truck driver, alluding to a stray standing in front of the door. Border guards, truck drivers and soldiers eat here. They can’t confirm if there are actually 7,500 soldiers sent in a hurry down here, but they can’t deny that the alert has been raised. But no more questions. “Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians … it does the same for us, nothing changes for us,” says the owner of the coffee as she mixes a soluble drink made from sugar and condensed milk. She does it all by herself here, day and night. When she closes she retreats to the back shack. In this plain at the end of the world, life is very hard, the houses are made of wood, there is no heating, people live on agriculture and livestock. There is no telephone coverage, the Internet needless to mention. “We have already seen so many” say two ladies in chorus who are warming up in a shop, the only shop within a kilometer radius, in the gray area, “we are used to for everything, as long as there is bread, then who is in charge does not matter ».
About 5,000 Russian soldiers are in Belarus for 10-day exercises, but Ukrainian army officials say the number could rise to 30,000. And, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday, the upcoming exercises are a cause for further concern: “In the past, Russia used them as a disguise, as a cover.” And to raise the alarm, US Defense Secretary Austin said the number of Russian troops mobilized “far exceeds what we would normally see in simple exercises.” The United States ordered the families of diplomats in Belarus to leave the country, motivating the decision for “an unusual and worrying Russian military build-up on the Belarusian border with Ukraine”.
While the bulk of the Kiev army is deployed in the Donbass, here it seems that only for a few weeks “there has been movement”. The same movement that is recorded beyond the buried friendship between the three sisters. “They’re coming, on the other side it’s full.” On the other hand, on the Russian side, for about ten days the truck drivers in transit to Kiev have been letting off steam with Kemal, a landlord without rooms but with an excellent Turkish coffee a few hundred meters from the border.
He, a Turkish passport and now a Ukrainian citizen, has lived in this lost place in the middle of the ice for six years and has already seen three wars before ending up here: the son of a Syrian and an Israeli Arab, he has seen Syria, Iraq , Afghanistan: “I was looking for peace, but it seems that war follows me wherever it goes.” Truck drivers stop in his place, especially Turkish ones: “It has been years since there have been many soldiers in the region on the border with Ukraine, they are always talking about this.” Tracked MT-LB armored vehicles, R-166-0.5 mobile radio stations, R-439-MD2 satellite communication vehicles, as well as various tanks, Kamaz trucks and Iskander missiles were sighted.
Drones and observation points help keep the border under control, a border guard lets escape. In Senkivka there are no bunkers or suitcases ready in case of war: “This land, these people – adds Kemal – has already suffered everything they could suffer, nothing here is more frightening”.
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