Period of Russian occupation of Crimea

The Period of Russian occupation of Crimea appears not as an abstract political backdrop but as a system encountered at checkpoints and in everyday speech. Sergeyich’s route is governed by passports, roadside orders and border controls, while a conversation about Crimean Tatars turns competing claims to the land into a blunt test of belonging.

Border controls and uncertain jurisdiction

At a checkpoint, soldiers inspect Sergeyich’s passport after he explains that he comes from Little Starhorodivka, near Karuselino, in the grey zone. One soldier checks whether the village falls within the D.P.R.; another questions why Sergeyich is entering through the O.R.D.L.O. His explanation that Petro advised him to take the safer route does not end the scrutiny. The border is enforced through documents and shifting territorial labels, even when the traveler’s home lies in a contested area.

The soldiers also take Sergeyich’s mobile phone and passport for inspection and direct him to pull over onto a shoulder blocked with concrete, so another car can pass. As evening falls, the waiting queue stretches away in a chain of headlights. Sergeyich listens at a hive while he waits, hearing a tired, despairing buzz; the soldier eventually returns his documents and phone. The pause makes the controls more than a formal procedure: they interrupt his movement and leave him anxious beside the bees he is trying to transport.

Crossing into Russia

The route onward brings Sergeyich to the Russian post at the Dzhankoy checkpoint. Before reaching it, he passes pedestrians carrying carts, suitcases and bags in both directions. The movement of people along the road contrasts with the formal border canopy, marked “RUSSIA. DZHANKOY CHECKPOINT.” He recalls a transformer box at the entrance to Chonhar bearing the words “18 KM TO THE RUSSIAN OCCUPIERS,” and is struck by how short the distance has been between that warning and the Russian checkpoint.

After passing the bridge, Sergeyich is directed to park. The officer approaching his Lada changes from stony indifference to stony perplexity. Later, Sergeyich drives slowly through the buffer zone, overtaking people on foot and searching the stream for Aisha, who has gone ahead toward the Ukrainian border. At the Ukrainian checkpoint, the guard remarks ironically on Sergeyich’s sunburn. The episode shows the crossing as a sequence of separate jurisdictions and inspections, with the buffer zone and the two border posts structuring the travelers’ movement.

Claims to the land and the Tatars

The occupation is also voiced through an argument in which a woman claims that Crimean Tatars are being expelled because they do not respect Russian authority. She says they will probably be sent back to “their Uzbekistans” and suggests they should never have returned. Sergeyich answers that Tatars have helped him and cautiously observes that the land is theirs.

The woman rejects this claim and invokes a Russian Orthodox history of Crimea: she asserts that the land has always been Russian Orthodox, recounts a story of Orthodoxy arriving from Turkey at Chersonesus before Islam, and says that the Turks later brought the Tatars. She appeals to Putin’s account as proof that Crimea is sacred Russian land. Sergeyich says he has not investigated the history and cannot say what happened; she insists that whatever Putin says is what happened and that he does not lie. Her certainty contrasts with Sergeyich’s hesitation, exposing how political authority is used to present a contested history as unquestionable fact.