“If you fear landmines, stay out of the woods”: life at the Belarus border

Ukrainian article of the week published in the 40th edition of the "What about Ukraine" newsletter on August 1st, 2024. The article was written by Denys Bulavin for Hromadske and was translated for n-ost by Tetiana Evloeva.

A shaky old minibus is travelling down the bumpy road towards the Ukraine-Belarus border. It’s suffocating, as a single open window is the only hope for fresh air. I cross my fingers that an old lady on the seat next to mine doesn’t ask to close it. As of now, my neighbour is busy snacking, and doesn’t mind the draught, so I am relieved and free to enjoy the landscapes of the Rivne region sweeping by.

On both sides of the motorway, whenever there’s a turnoff into the woods, I notice red signs by the road. As the bus slows down to dodge another pothole, I manage to read the warning on one of those signs: ‘Caution! Landmines!’

“How come the Rivne Region is riddled with landmines? Where did they come from?” I recall commenters asking below a news report. This was about some men who went to a forest in the north to illegally source wood. They knocked down the warning sign and, while driving in the forest, detonated a landmine.

Despite no active hostilities taking place in the region, Ukraine mined its entire border with Belarus, for its own safety.

That is why news media hromadske sent a reporter to the northwest border of Ukraine, to see how that affected the people whose daily activities have always been linked to the woods.

“As long as people stay alive, the damage is not that important”

Finally, we reach Zarichne, a village of 7,000 inhabitants, just a short walk from Belarus. I get off in the centre, and browse a farmers’ market that pops up weekly. It’s not very crowded. Some people are selling goods from their gardens, and others offer a selection of honey. I approach a lady selling blackberries near a shop entrance. Aware of the ban on people going into the forest imposed in this area, I ask her where she has harvested those berries.

“Why, in the woods,” she answers. “We go there, and try to make ends meet. People are scouting the places where they can pick some berries and bring in some additional seasonal income. Not everyone here has a regular job, you know.” Where she lives, right at the border, there are no border guards turning people away from the woods.

The subject changes to the misfortune of people who walk on landmines. A local woman laments: “Some people just don’t pay attention and fail to see those warning signs. Others see the signs, but choose to ignore them.”

Nearby, an old man is arranging his jars of motley grass honey for an asking price of UAH 150 [~3.4 euro] per jar. Sometime later, Nadiia, a local retiree, comes with her two small buckets of blackcurrants. She bemoans the lack of shoppers on a market day, as most younger people have left the area, and the older folks prefer staying at home.

I ask the lady if she’s heard anything about a tractor that was blown up this spring, and she just shrugs:

“Hey, did you hear that?” Nadiia calls out to an acquaintance of hers, who is interested in buying berries. “There was a tractor that triggered a landmine in our area!”

“Oh really? Was it not in [another border town] Nenkovychi?” the woman replies.

“It was, like, three months ago,” the old man chimes in. “There was that tractor driver and another man at his side.”

“Were they killed?” clarifies Nadiia.

“No, the mine was triggered by their trailer, so both men survived,” the man answers.

“As long as people stay alive, the damage is not that important,” the woman sums up.

On 5 April this year, the news reported a tractor triggering a landmine. Two civilians were lucky to only sustain minor injuries. The local authorities reported that the driver ignored the ‘Caution! Landmines!’ warning sign.

“Our people are hardworking, and keep the place in order,” says Nadiia. “Of course, they go berry picking, it’s their means to provide for themselves. I mean, this is hard labour, in the heat like this — and still, they go and do it, disregarding mosquitos and the landmines.”

Nadiia notes that the locals even make sure to have some type of ID on them, when going into the woods, adding that the locals are aware of the places one should never go. I ask whether they are afraid to live so close to the Belarus border. Someone nearby answers that they are used to it. Nadiia, on the contrary, finds the fact unsettling: “They told us on the radio that some Chinese troops were undergoing military training in Belarus, near our border. So far, all has been quiet, thank God, but what about the future?”

Her fear, however, is swiftly overshadowed by outrage. The woman is angry at the invaders. She curses them, and then bursts into tears.

“We all live with this war, dreaming for it to be over, so there are no more coffins of fallen lads being brought home, and so that our youth can return alive. Those fallen young men are being brought home, the cream of our nation. Many of them were killed before they got any chance to start a family, leaving no descendants. Pestilence upon the invaders! Cursed be those who fired that rocket missile aiming at Okhmatdyt [Ukraine’s main children’s hospital], cursed be them, and seven generations after them!”

Using mine warnings as firewood

After some chit-chat with the locals, I head to my meeting with the border guards and Bohdan Kvachuk, head of the village council. The latter assures me that the local governments tirelessly communicate the landmine safety measures to the community, informing the residents of the areas that are off limits. They also engage the local media in their awareness campaign.

Kvachuk insists that the attitudes among the residents did change compared to the early days of the full-scale invasion: “While some people used to ignore the warning signs before, today everyone understands their importance, as there were cases of folks ignoring those signs and getting themselves blown up. Now people understand that those areas are off limits.”

It’s not that there’s a strict ban on anyone going into the woods altogether. The border guards have defined the areas where it was safe for locals to go, for berry picking in particular. Other areas, however, are defined as dangerous, and going there is strictly forbidden. The border guards who patrol those areas share that so far, they have never caught any berry pickers in those landmine fields.

“Picking berries in the woods remains one of the main sources of income for many,” says the head of the village, “However, some nice areas adjacent to the border are off-limits now, so people have to go in the opposite direction. Still, those who used to pick berries continue to do so, as our forests are plentiful.”

Kvachuk emphasises that most of the time people trigger landmines because they ignore the warning signs. To make those occurrences as sparse as possible, landmine safety is continuously communicated to the locals — especially children.

Most of the schools have already introduced safety classes in their curricula, where the pupils are taught to recognise mines and grenades, as well as safety measures around those explosives. The government is currently raising funds to introduce more classes in the next school year.

I am so into my conversation with Kvachuk that it takes me some time to recall that I haven’t taken any pictures in the market while the local vendors were still selling their goods. When I return, people have already left for their homes, to avoid the scorching sun.

I am also not keen on the idea of putting my own heat tolerance to a test, so I hurry to the editor’s office of a local newspaper, Polissia, to ask my colleagues for both shelter and some local secrets. Semen Poliukhovych, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief,complains that despite some progress in everything concerning landmine safety, the danger is always present due to a lack of warning signs. The wooden posts, as well as the signs on them, are often destroyed with time or buried under the snow, or fall down due to heavy weather.

“They need to replace those signs occasionally or make them more durable,” he says. “When you go to the borderline villages, even the sides of the roads there are riddled with landmines. The locals are aware of them, yet some traveller may trigger one of those mines by accident.”

He even recalls a comical situation when in one area, a local woman went around the forest uprooting those signs, perhaps to use their posts as firewood. Luckily, her activities were noticed, and the signs she had accumulated were confiscated and returned to their proper locations.

The newspaper staff also say that one time the locals of Zarichne blew themselves up as they went into the forest to illegally source wood. These failed thieves are doing just fine now. They were detained while trying to escape the explosion site, but no charges were pressed.

“We all live with this war”

Semen Poliukhovych offers me a ride to Nenkovychi village, fewer than three km from the border. Before the full-scale war, the locals used to go to the neighbouring village in Belarus to buy some bread. Now that habit has been put to an end.

It isn’t long before we arrive, and leave the sun-baked car. On a telegraph pole, there’s a nest, where the storks “keep watch” on the nearest human dwelling, the home to the editor’s in-laws. As I enjoy the welcome coolness of the shade, the lady of the house, Svitlana, offers me a bowl of borsht and starts up a conversation. The woman laments that the land use restrictions took a toll on people’s homesteads.

“People are forced to sell their cows due to lack of available pastures, and can’t even go fishing to our usual places on the river,” she says. “We sowed our fields in 2022, yet we couldn’t harvest them in 2023, as those fields were out of limits.”

Still, the woman mentions that despite the situation deteriorating, they are still able to feed themselves. Life goes on, as long as the enemy hasn’t taken over their land, adds Svitlana.

In the meanwhile, the locals have decorated the main muddy road in greenery and flowers, and several young women in black dresses, with their heads covered with black kerchiefs, are carrying branches of mountain ash and birch, and ferns. That floral trail stretches from the entrance of the village to a wooden home, traditional for the region, and onto the local church and then cemetery.

The people of Nenkovychy are bidding their final farewell to yet another, fourth, community member who has fallen in the war. After bending the knee, I hear the police sirens, alerting the residents of the approaching funeral procession. The women’s lament grows louder. Moments like this hit you hard with an understanding of what common grief means.

A salvo of blank rounds echoes through the street. “He’s home now,” whispers an elderly lady from the back row, as the coffin is lowered into the grave. That coffin is the final abode of Volodymyr Demchuk, a young military serviceman in his early thirties killed by a Russian aerial bomb on the Kharkiv frontline. The fellow villagers recall that “Never in his entire life had he hurt anyone”.

After bidding the last farewell to the hero, we walk to Svitlana and her husband Mykola’s house in silence. I keep recalling the words of Nadiia from Zarichne: “We all live with this war”. One would think that a village in the woods, a thousand kilometres from the frontline, is worlds away from the conflict — yet the war is very real here.