Border village grinds to a halt amid Ukraine-Russia tensions
On the map, Chertkovo and Melove is one village, crossed by railroad tracks and a main road called the Friendship of Peoples Street. That slogan still rings true for many locals, but is being sorely tested by the animosity between their two nations, Russia and Ukraine.
On the streets, villagers speak a mix of Russian and Ukrainian without turning the choice of language into a political statement as many others did elsewhere, fueling the conflict between Ukraine and Russia since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.
In the past, locals would routinely cross the main street — back and forth between the two countries — as border guards looked the other way. But earlier this year, Russia built a barbed wire fence along the main street, separating the village into two camps.
These days, the busiest border crossing — on a low-hanging bridge spanning the railway tracks that run alongside the Friendship of Peoples Street — looks nearly deserted.
On Friday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced that all Russian males aged 16 to 60 will now be barred from entering the country — a sign that relations between the two uneasy neighbours are deteriorating further after the Russian coast guard fired upon and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels in the Black Sea on Nov. 25. Also last week, Kyiv announced 30 days of martial law in the border regions to bolster the nation’s defences against Russian aggression.
In truth, restrictions on Russians entering Ukraine had already effectively existed in Chertkovo for years.
In 2015, Ukraine adopted a decree requiring Russians who want to cross the border to use foreign travel passports, as opposed to internal passports used in the former Soviet Union. Few Russians living in rural areas like Chertkovo have such documents.
Four and a half years after fighting broke out between Russia-backed separatists and Ukraine troops in eastern Ukraine, only elderly women like 73-year-old Lidia Radchenko — a smiling woman in a bulky fur coat — brave the Chertkovo crossing. She has three sons living in Ukraine, while another son and a daughter reside in Russia.
“How can do you this? We used to have such great parties. We would gather in the middle of the road,” said Rachenko, who lives by the railroad tracks.
“That fence is like a concentration camp.”