Displaced, page 12
Right before the border, there’s a line of cars stretching about two kilometers. But they’ve set up a field kitchen and the military men provide the refugees with food and migration cards. Denys’s family eats buckwheat kasha and crackers, fills out the migration forms, and waits.
At 8:00 P.M. (which means they’ve already been traveling for fourteen hours), it’s finally their turn. They’re ordered to completely unload their cars, to take everything out, even the floor mats and spare tires.
A thorough search ensues. The soldiers open all their bags and go through all their clothes. Then they carefully check their papers. The women and children get their documents back, but the men have to park their cars and go to the customs office to get their passports.
There’s a room in that building, a hall of roughly sixty square meters, where about a hundred men are waiting for an interview. Some have been waiting an entire day. There’s no food, no water, no bathroom. And you can’t step away because you might be called at any minute. They don’t call out the men in the order they arrived, it’s totally random—the officer throws all their passports in a box, randomly picks one out, calls the name, and if no one answers, the passport is thrown back into the box, and who knows when they’ll call you next. So, no one leaves. Everyone waits in the room with two people per square meter. There are only a few benches in the room, and the men take turns sitting.
They say if you go through the filtration camp by bus, you may end up waiting for two weeks. It’s much better in your own car, but most people’s cars didn’t survive the shelling. They say that the filtration goes faster at night. Denys gets lucky—his name is called just three hours later, around 11:00 P.M.
He enters the room and sees two investigators. They order him to strip, keeping only his underwear on. They check him for tattoos as well as bruises typical of military men (for example, a bruise from a rifle butt on your right shoulder); they search for calluses, burns, and belt imprints typical of soldiers. Then they carefully study your cellphone. They look through all your social networks, all your photos and videos. The refugees who’d taken this route before warned Denys about the searches, and so he erased all compromising photos—photos that could possibly be connected to the war, but he kept his family photos. He erased any even remotely suspicious texts but left his private chats with his wife. That way, the phone wouldn’t look empty. It would appear totally innocent and wouldn’t provoke any questions. The only thing Denys forgot to erase is the number of the auto-service center where he used to take his car.
The name of the service center is Nika Azov, and that’s how it’s listed in his contacts.
“Who’s this Nika from Azov?” the investigator asks, instantly imagining a female sniper from the Azov battalion who is hiding somewhere in the catacombs of the Severstal plant.5
“It’s not a person,” answers Denys, “it’s an auto repair shop.”
“Let’s call your Nika.”
“Okay.”
No one picks up.
“Look at my car,” says Denys, “there’s Nika Azov on the license plate.”
The inspector looks through the window, sees Denys’s car, and believes him. But he keeps asking questions anyway.
“Who do you know from Azov?”
“No one.”
“Have you seen how they shoot? Who was shooting?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Did you see the fighters from Azov?”
“I’ve never seen any.”
“Do you know anyone in the army?” “No, I don’t know anyone.”
“What about the police?”
“No one.”
“Who do you know from Azov?”
“I’ve already said, I don’t know anyone.”
They repeat their questions. The investigator asks each question at least five times, and each time he asks it faster. And he adds new questions: Has Denys served in the army? Why hasn’t he served? Who do you know from Azov? And from the police? And why haven’t you served? Have they made you speak Ukrainian? And who do you know from Azov? And from the police? And from the army? And why haven’t you served?
Faster and faster, they go around in circles, to confuse Denys and trip him up—and it lasts forty minutes.
“Let me go already, I have kids in the car!”
“Okay, you can go.”
With his long-awaited passport in hand, Denys goes to his car, where the final test is about to begin. The car belongs to Denys’s father, and Denys is driving with a motor vehicle power of attorney, written by hand. And the customs officer knows this. The officer stays near the car and waits.
“Your car doesn’t belong to you. Are you aware of that?”
“Yes, it’s my father’s car, and he gave me authorization.”
“To cross a state border, you need an officially notarized power of attorney. Do you know that?”
“And what can I do about it now? I have kids. Do you want me to go back? I have enough gas to reach the first gas station, but there’s no gas in Ukraine.”
“That’s your problem.”
They keep talking for another half hour. This customs officer tries to extort money from Denys. First with hints, and then without beating around the bush. But they haven’t got any money. Denys turns out his pockets, shows him his empty wallet. Denys’s wife shows him her empty wallet too.
“Okay, go.”
When Denys’s car leaves the border checkpoint and enters Crimea, the clock shows 3:00 A.M. They’ve been on the road for twenty-one hours. His kids are sleeping. There’s a banknote folded eight times in the pocket of his kid’s jacket—their last hundred-dollar bill to exchange, get gas, and keep driving farther through Slavyansk-na-Kubani, Rostov, Voronezh, and Moscow—then to the West.
DASHA FROM MOSCOW
Denys drives to Kerch, then from Kerch to Slavyansk-na-Kubani, across the famous bridge. On the bridge, they’re stopped and searched again. They ask some questions but let them go, without even demanding a bribe. In Slavyansk-na-Kubani, Denys manages to buy Russian SIM-cards, and from that moment on they are guided by Russian volunteers, who will lead them to the Latvian border and then pass them off to Rubikus volunteers. Dasha T., a volunteer whom Denys can call in any difficult situation, is an actress and musician, who occasionally moonlights transcribing audio transcripts for TV. Denys accepts her help with gratitude, never suspecting that Dasha’s life, too, is going to hell.
In Rostov, the volunteers recruited by Dasha meet Denys, rent him an apartment for two nights, and provide him with some food and money. In the meantime, Dasha gets a call from the recruiting agency she works with. They offer her a job—transcribing interviews for the TV channel Russia Today. It’s a very good gig, highly paid and long-term. But Dasha refuses the work—she doesn’t want to transcribe this senseless propaganda. Those lies about the war will, of course, be published, but not with Dasha’s help.
It was a surprise for the recruiting agency: “Why would you refuse such a good job?” “Do I really need to explain why?” Dasha asked.
“Well, things aren’t that bad.”
“No, things are indeed that bad.”
Most likely the agency will never offer Dasha another job. Denys doesn’t know anything about this as he sleeps in the Rostov apartment, along with his family—who are now, finally, safe and sound.
Two days later, Denys fills up his tank—an almost forgotten feeling!—and takes his family to Voronezh, where another set of Dasha’s volunteers is waiting for them with a new apartment for one night and a lovingly prepared meal. Meanwhile, Dasha gets a call from her accompanist. Dasha’s a jazz singer, and she can’t perform without an accompanist. But her accompanist calls and says that he’s leaving—he can’t live in Russia anymore, he can’t stand to see the letter “Z” written on all the municipal buildings and public transportation. Dasha understands and supports him, but the fact that her accompanist is leaving means that now Dasha doesn’t have this job either—you can’t sing jazz a cappella. Denys doesn’t know anything about this. In Buturlinovka, a small city near Voronezh, he chats with the volunteers in the kitchen and can’t believe there are so many kind and caring people in Russia.
The next day Denys goes to Moscow. He’s stopped at every police checkpoint and his documents are checked. The highway patrol officers search him, but it’s nothing personal. They even smile at him with a hint of guilt, as if to say, Sorry, we don’t have any issues with you, it’s just that we have orders to check all the cars with Ukrainian license plates, so don’t get upset. Denys doesn’t get upset, especially because he knows there are nice volunteers waiting for him, along with a cozy apartment, good food, and gas money. The volunteers try to convince Denys not to go straight to Latvia but to take the long way through St. Petersburg, to stay there for a time to decide where exactly to go. But Denys doesn’t understand why he should take such a detour when Latvia is so close—only eight hundred kilometers, one day of driving.
“Listen, don’t go to Latvia through Burachki. The checkpoint there is really bad, they pick on everyone, interrogate everyone, and search every pocket.”
“Well, I don’t think it can be worse than in the filtration camp.”
“Listen, it’s better to go through Ivangorod. There are thousands of people in Petersburg who take in refugees. You can stay there for a while, think about your future, and maybe visit the Hermitage while we look for ferry tickets and a place for you to live in Germany. And the lines are shorter at the Ivangorod checkpoint.”
But Denys is reluctant to spend two extra days in Russia and drive an extra thousand kilometers in a car with a starter that’s acting up. Denys decides to take a shortcut and go through Burachki. The volunteers don’t argue anymore. They just write to Dasha that Denys and his family are going straight to Latvia.
The next day Dasha gets a call from the producer of a puppet theater, her third source of employment. The producer tells her the theater is closing, most of the actors are leaving for the West, but they’re all going to different countries and so it won’t be possible to restage their shows abroad. Dasha doesn’t say anything—now she doesn’t have this job either. But it’s okay, Dasha thinks, it’s okay, I can sing in karaoke bars, in restaurants, and suburban trains. Dasha thinks it’s better for her to have a low income in Russia but do what she loves rather than have a low income in Europe and work as a supermarket cashier or a pizza delivery person.
The next morning, the GPS directs Denys down Dasha’s street, and he literally drives under Dasha’s windows. But Denys doesn’t know that. In another ten hours, he’s at the Burachki checkpoint where the line is at least two days long.
“Do you want to get through faster?” a man asks, sticking his head out of his car’s window. “Give me ten thousand rubles, and your car will be tenth in line.”
This is typical business in Burachki. The locals supplement their income by securing a place in line, staying there for days, and then selling their spots. In any case, Denys doesn’t have ten thousand rubles; he spent his last money to buy a migration card, car insurance, which is mandatory in Latvia, and chocolate bars for the kids.
Denys is in a line that isn’t moving. Dasha writes him that there’s another checkpoint nearby and, according to the refugees’ chatrooms, the line is much shorter. Denys drives there. There are only eight cars in this line, and it’s possible to cross the border in three hours, even taking into account the fact that they’ll have to completely unload the car and be searched again. They’ll interrogate the kids: What’s your mommy’s name? What’s your daddy’s name? What’s your sister’s name? They take Denys to a back room and ask him questions: Do you know the Azov steel plant? Do you know anyone in the Ukrainian police? The Ukrainian Army? From the Azov Battalion? And the main question, of course, is: Who’s Nika Azov? Is she a sniper?
By nightfall, Denys with his wife and kids and his sister’s family finally reach the checkpoint on the Latvian border. The officer peeks inside their cars:
“Are the kids asleep?”
“Yes, they’re sleeping.”
“It’s okay, don’t wake them up.”
As soon as the officer stamps their passports, they are free to go. The Rubikus volunteers are already here. They have found a house in Latvia where Denys’s family can stay overnight, and they have booked them tickets for the ferry from Liepāja to Hamburg. In Hamburg, they place Denys with his wife and children in a small but comfortable apartment in a multi-storey building. Denys gets 1600 euro per month in assistance for his immediate family, but for some time he has a problem spending the money—every day his neighbors bring them food and clothes and take turns inviting them for lunch and dinner.
Denys cherishes the memories of the volunteers who helped him in Russia and tells his new German neighbors all about them, explaining passionately that not all Russians are cruel bribetakers who are armed-to-the-teeth. There are selfless people among them as well. He doesn’t say anything about Dasha who brought all these volunteers together. He simply doesn’t know that she exists.
And Dasha stays in Russia and continues helping refugees from Ukraine travel through Russia to the West. She doesn’t want to emigrate. She prefers that the so-called patriots who wear the letter “Z” on their clothes hate her for denouncing the war and helping refugees evacuate—at least they hate her for something she really believes in. It’s better than to be hated in Europe for being Russian and for starting this war—for something she’s not guilty of.
“NAZI COLLABORATORS”
There are several thousand volunteers in Russia, and there’s always someone on call, ready to help the refugees at any time, day or night, along their long journey from Taganrog to Petersburg.
They take in the refugees, allowing them to stay overnight at their apartments—in thousands of apartments. They spend their own money—hundreds of thousands of rubles—to pay for the refugees’ gas, train and bus tickets, phones, and food. They cook cutlets for the refugees and fix their cars; they buy winter boots, medication, wheelchairs, and carriers for their cats—and they do all this anonymously.
These volunteers don’t break any laws. In Russia, where it’s prohibited to even say “the war,” there’s no law that prohibits helping refugees get where they want to go.
In the chatroom, they don’t use their real names, only nicknames, and the people don’t personally know one another. Just in case, they avoid any conversations about politics or the war—they’re afraid of being charged under the law against public defamation of the military (which carries a sentence of up to twenty years in prison). In short, they exercise extreme caution. Which still doesn’t completely protect them from snitches.
Despite this secrecy, there are already a few victims among the Rubikus volunteers who have been prosecuted for their humanitarian activity. The story of two volunteers from Penza—the economist Irina Gurskaya and the lawyer Igor Zhulimov—is the most representative.
There’s a refugee camp in the Village of Leonidovka near Penza. The Ukrainian authorities call it a concentration camp and insist that the refugees are kept there by force. That’s not exactly true. Leonidovka is a former camp for shift workers, a whole settlement of red-roofed barracks. Several years ago, soldiers lived there while working on the destruction of chemical weapons. Once the chemical weapons had been destroyed, or better concealed, the barracks were no longer occupied.
In April 2022, almost fifteen hundred refugees, mainly from Mariupol, were brought to the barracks in Leonidovka. No one held them there by force. About a third of the refugees were happy with the living conditions in Leonidovka and were saying that, judging by their communications with friends and relatives who had emigrated to the West, the Penza barracks were more comfortable than Polish shopping centers or German gyms, where refugees had to sleep on the floor at night and remove the mattresses during the day. In Leonidovka, they were allowed to lie down all day long.
The other two thirds wanted to leave, but all their money was in hryvnias and there was no free transportation for refugees in Russia. No one was detaining them, but they couldn’t leave. People expressed their dissatisfaction, but they didn’t rebel.
The Penza priest Father Vladimir Ketane hoped to alleviate the refugees’ concerns with humanitarian aid and peaceful sermons and to switch their minds away from conversations such as: “You attacked us, and now you don’t even let us leave.” But the sermons didn’t help, and the discontent grew.
At this point, Irina Gurskaya and Igor Zhulimov began an online fundraising campaign to buy train tickets to send refugees through Petersburg to Narva where the Rubikus volunteers would meet them and guide them through Europe. Nothing illegal was being done. Nevertheless, pro-government Telegram channels labelled Gurskaya and Zhulimov “British grant-suckers” who “live according to Bandera printouts” and “support fake news about Russian concentration camps.”
An unidentified person wrote in blue and yellow paint on Igor Zhulimov’s apartment door: “Ukrainian nationalist lives here.” The same caption appeared on the door of Irina Gurskaya’s apartment. The next day, someone punctured the tires of Igor Zhulimov’s car, and the police arrested Irina Gurskaya on the pretense of an anonymous report. Gurskaya was interrogated for almost an entire day—first, in a police department, then unknown people in masks drove her to the woods where they tried to scare her; they beat her up and then detonated a sound bomb above her head . . .
The main object of the interrogation was Gurskaya’s cellphone, which the people in masks combed through looking for traces of foreign financing and inquiring about the people who communicated with her about the refugees. It’s good that Gurskaya truly didn’t know any of them personally, only by their nicknames. In twenty-four hours, they let Gurskaya go, but they kept her papers, including her passport.
