“Humanitarian disaster”. Like fugitives from the mobilization of the consumed week in traffic jams on the borders of Russia
- Victoria Safronova
- BBC Russian Service
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For more than a week, many kilometers of traffic jams have been almost motionless on the borders of Russia with other countries. After Vladimir Putin announced a “private” mobilization of Russia, dozens, if not a hundred thousand people leave. People standing in these traffic jams talk about a “humanitarian catastrophe” at the border.
At the border between Russia and Georgia, now you can stand for about five days. People spend their days when they fly by in cars – they also sleep there. Those stuck in traffic jams gradually run out of food and water.
The expected people get in despair: they abandon the cars in the hope that someone close to them will later take them or they can be sold, and sometimes they have to walk tens of kilometers to the checkpoint.
Standing in traffic jams is overgrown with its “business”, for example, the opening of a paid transportation service to the checkpoint. Eyewitnesses say that they take from 45 to 150 rubles for this, and sometimes thousands according to their records, this is returned by the police or border guards. Out of desperation, I decided to do it.
It is not yet clear how many Russians have left for Georgia in the last week. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan reported about 98,000 Russian citizens entering their country during the week of September 21-27.
The BBC Russian service tells how the Russians’ unwillingness to participate in the capture of the humanitarian crisis at the borders, and how the first week went in the border queues.
Sitting in the car for days
“Upper Lars” over the past week has become a household name for a place where a life of its own has developed for those who want to leave. If in the first days of mobilization it was possible to get to the checkpoint at the border in a few hours, now those who are standing are talking about a day of waiting.
“This is just a humanitarian catastrophe. People were sitting in cars, sometimes without moving at all, they were running out of water,” Alexander describes the situation at the border.
Together with a friend, they drove from Bryansk to Vladikavkaz in a day, and then it happened in a many-kilometer traffic jam. The journey from this point to the checkpoint crossing took four days.
“In some places, I had to break traffic rules very severely in order to tell me to move forward.
Now, according to Alexander, it is already unrealistic to stand in a traffic jam and get through in four days.
On Thursday evening, Olga heard that her family’s car had been in this traffic jam since seven in the morning on Monday. When a passage for pedestrians was opened at the border, they simply drove without traffic for 17 hours.
“But there were some advantages: everyone started to get out of the cars, the children made friends with a friend, our five-year-old daughter played actively until late in the evening, and the adults made a fire and warmed up boiling water,” Olga spent the waiting time. During this time, her husband managed to go to the nearest village for food. Your “neighbors” found a spring in the cork and took water from there.
After the same long and difficult waiting will take place on the border with Kazakhstan. “It’s very cold there, the steppe, it’s raining, on the first day they constantly started the car to warm up, but then they were afraid that they were getting gasoline,” says Anastasia from Tolyatti. During the first day, they traveled only seven kilometers out of 27.
When rumors once again appeared that the border with Kazakhstan would be closed on September 27, Anastasia asked her husband to go on foot, while she herself remained in the car.
“We got about 20 kilometers to the border.
Anastasia’s husband observed that the most terrible situations were observed near the border. “People lost sight. They cursed, discovering passages out of turn. Even the border guard went out with a machine gun and turned to people with a search in a normal even queue,” she retells his words.
Not everyone has the opportunity to rent a car in a traffic jam and on foot. In this case, resellers chat their services. One of them, who asked not to be named, said that he received more than 20 requests in less than a day after the announcement in the Upper Lars chat. Most of the profits come from low cost car owners, some just get the price to think about.
In his opinion, many are dissatisfied with the prices that he offers – they are below market prices due to excessive costs. But if a person does not want to sell the car, he offers another option: to transport her money for relatives or simply put it in storage.
People in queues repeat each other. In terms of importance in the chat in the Telegram, they were looking for a ginger cat that got lost in a traffic jam. Galina said that she and her family took the cat from Voronezh already on the way to Georgia. His owners left for Georgia even before the start of mobilization, and then decided not to return, and asked someone to pick up the cat. Seeing the traffic jam in place, Galina, with her daughter and a dog, rented an apartment for a week, and her husband with a cat in a carrier went to cross the road on foot. On the way, he put the bag on the ground to get water from the backpack – at that moment the cat opened the bag and ran away.
Galina informed the owners about the loss, wrote a message in the “Upper Lars” chat with the cargo, if someone finds it.
“People started reposting so actively that they even blocked me in the chat. The phone rang every five minutes, sometimes more often. she is.
At the same time, people in the chat are constantly asking each other if the cat has been found. The last time Galina’s stress was a man who left Georgia for Elista and, having met a cat on the road, took him home. He promised to send his photo later. The Elista transport company has already contacted Galina and demanded that he be brought.
Help and mutual support is one of the main components of this community. People who are just leaving for Georgia buy more food with them, share it with their neighbors in turn. Volunteers walk between the cars, among whom people take food or water for free. Many thank and refuse: they say that they still have supplies, while others may need more.
True, there are those who are trying to sell food. Anastasia talks about Ossetian pies, which could be bought for 800 rubles.
The transferred documents are written very tired, says volunteer Kira Sotnikov, who collects humanitarian aid for the Russians and meets them at the border.
“The impression is like in zombie films,” says Sotnikov. “They push these unfortunate bicycles, trudge, I even saw a rather adult woman with a wand. But there is despair, because now you need to look and work, you need to somehow get to the city, when taxi drivers break prices.
Volunteers also meet Russians at the border with Kazakhstan, and transport them en masse to the nearest city on their own. Because of this, they often have conflicts with taxi drivers.
“They say we are taking away their bread, and earlier they said, ‘Get out of the country, go to your Russia and do whatever you want there.’ But we are citizens of Kazakhstan, I have lived here all my life,” says 21-year-old Nastya, who lives together with dozens of other residents of Kazakhstan, the crisis and the beginning of the newcomer herself were not observed. She reports that volunteers receive transfers for food and hygiene products, including from the new Russia.
Don’t make it to Finland
After the closure of the borders of the Baltic countries and Poland, there are almost no dangers left in Russia to penetrate the Schengen zone. Finland was one of the most popular, especially for residents of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region.
But in full on September 30, Finland closed the entry for tourists from Russia, warning about this in less than a day. An exception can be made for Russians with tourist Schengen visas if they have serious reasons for traveling – for example, meeting with close relatives, studying or working.
Igor found out about this when he was already traveling by bus to Finland. “From the beginning I had nowhere to find it. I tried tests, tests,” he says.
The bus arrived at the train around 2-3 am on September 30, when the ban had already officially entered into force. Igor says: the border guards simply looked through the documents and let him go without any warning. Checking documents at the Finnish border dragged on for several hours.
“I said that I was going to my sister with cancer, I want to take her to public doctors. It was exaggerated, but it was an attempt. The border guard shook his head, smiled and said: “No, you won’t go,” Igor describes the situation.
For the next seven hours, he and several others with non-Finnish visas waited for their documents to be returned. The passports were returned along with the refusal of entry. “They took the handle to the fence, in the rain, they put out to catch the car,” says Igor.
At the same time, Stanislav (name changed at the suggestion) pursues the goal of a reverse introduction – from Finland to Russia. While the border guards reached the arriving bus, about five cars arrived in the car queue – those who were not allowed to leave for sending and turned around.
“There was a queue at the Russian border – somehow I could see about 100 cars on the Finnish side. People stopped, hoped for something, wanted to pass. If not for this delay, they would have had a chance to leave,” says Stanislav .
Eduard and his daughter arrived at the Torfyanovka checkpoint at about 20.00 and spent four hours waiting in line. “The queue was long, but ours didn’t start up very quickly: either because there were a lot of cars inside, although we didn’t see them, or there was no great desire,” he says.
They found the Russian track at about 1.30 and after this happened in line for the Finnish one, where they stood for another three hours. Finland was not the goal, they went to Spain in transit, where they have an apartment. The trip was planned long ago, which allowed the date of purchase of tickets.
“We had all the documents on hand: tickets, documents for an apartment. .
The border guards escorted people to the waiting room for a scheduled bus and fenced off the forbidden part of the roads so that they could not enter the country.
From Murmansk to Norway
The only open Schengen country that Russians can enter by land remains Norway. Checkpoint “Borisoglebsk” is located on the territory of the Pechenga district of the Murmansk region. Through this crossing, buses and cars come from the Murmansk region to Kirkenes in the northeastern part of Norway, the nearest border town.
After the closure of entry to Finland, the head of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice, Emily Enger Mehl, allowed the introduction of a similar border for the Russians. Few people came to Norway compared to Finland. [из России]and here is situational,” the minister said.
Norway will also monitor the border with a helicopter with sensors, as the country’s authorities consider it a heightened risk of terrorist terrorism.