Russian Armed Forces

The Russian Armed Forces appear as a military power behind the continuing war in eastern Ukraine and as a presence entangled with local forces around Little Starhorodivka. The novel does not portray them through a single sustained character or institutional viewpoint; instead, their role is disclosed in the geography of opposing positions, the rules imposed at checkpoints, and the uncertainty that follows people across front lines and borders.

Role in the War

The foreword describes Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its dispatch of officers, volunteers, and activists to eastern and southern Ukrainian cities to foment anti-Kyiv revolts. It presents the resulting conflict as one Russia continues to replenish with military personnel and large quantities of equipment and ammunition. The Russian Armed Forces are thus associated with the organized military support that sustains a war whose unresolved state leaves eastern Ukraine politically and practically divided.

That large-scale account narrows to the village’s immediate surroundings. Ukrainian troops have held dugouts and trenches near the field beyond Sergey Sergeyich’s garden for three years. Beyond Pashka Khmelenko’s street and the remaining apricot grove, local fighters share dugouts with the Russian military. Their position is not merely a distant political fact: the village’s fields have lost their workers, and the two remaining residents live amid opposing armed presences.

Front Lines and Local Authority

The novel distinguishes the Russian military from local fighters rather than treating every armed group as one force. In its account of the village, the Russian military is present in the dugouts beyond the gardens, alongside local lads. At checkpoints, however, authority is exercised through soldiers who inspect papers, query Sergeyich’s route, and consult over whether his home village falls within the separatist-controlled territory. Their exchange makes movement dependent on how officials classify a place and on which route a traveler has taken.

A postal ceasefire illustrates how even a brief pause is organized around the conflict’s divided territory. Pashka tells Sergeyich that there will be one quiet day so that accumulated mail can be delivered to villages in the grey zone, where local post offices have not been operating. The military conflict remains the condition shaping ordinary services: correspondence can resume only through a specially designated lull.

Civilians under Conflicting Rules

The front line is not the only boundary governing Sergeyich. After entering the Russian Federation, he visits the Federal Security Service to ask about Akhtem Mustafayev. A guard tells him that he will not receive asylum and that his stay is limited to ninety days. Later, a detective warns that, as a foreigner, he must leave within eleven days or face detention. These encounters concern Russian state authorities rather than establishing that the Russian Armed Forces themselves administer those rules; together, they show how the wider conflict places a civilian traveler under overlapping military and legal controls.

A separate arrest exposes the fragility of legal protection for a Crimean family. A detective tells Sergeyich that Bekir Mustafayev has been detained not only over church candles but also for driving his deceased father’s car without official permission and speaking disrespectfully to the authorities. Sergeyich objects that the car belonged to Bekir’s father, who had been killed, but the detective treats the absence of formal authorization as a violation. The scene does not identify the Russian Armed Forces as the arresting body; its relevance is the wider atmosphere of power in which official rules and a family’s circumstances collide.

Narrative Significance

The Russian Armed Forces are most consequential in the book as part of a distributed system of pressure rather than as individually developed characters. Their presence beside local fighters helps explain why the village’s quiet is precarious, why residents abandon work and homes, and why a journey with bees involves routes, checkpoints, documents, and uncertainty. The novel sets this military geography against Sergeyich’s practical concerns—keeping his bees alive, carrying honey, and finding a place to settle—so that war’s reach is measured not only in positions and weapons but in the ordinary decisions it constrains.