On edge near Belarus border, Ukrainian village grapples with mine threat in forests
A shaky minibus is approaching the border with Belarus along a bumpy asphalt road. Only an open window saves the occupants of the old minibus from suffocation as I cross my fingers that the old lady on the seat next to me doesn't ask to close it. While my neighbor is busy with her lunch and doesn't care about the draft, I am relieved to see the scenery of Rivne Oblast.
On both sides of the road, where it turns into the forest, I notice red signs. When the minibus slows down before another pothole, I manage to read the warning: "Caution, mines".
"Why on earth are there mines in Rivne Oblast?" people wondered a year and a half ago in the comments under the news that in the north of the region, men who went to steal wood knocked down a warning sign and hit a mine.
Indeed, there was no fighting, but for its own safety, Ukraine mined the entire border perimeter with Belarus.
To see how the life of people whose lives have always been connected to the forest has changed, hromadske traveled to the northwestern border of Ukraine.
Different paths
Finally, we reached Zarichne, a village of 7,000 people, from where Belarus is within easy reach. I get off in the center, where it's market day every Wednesday. There are not many people: someone brought vegetables or gardens, and another sells honey. I notice a woman near the store, who has blueberries in her basket. Knowing about the ban on visiting the forest in this municipality, I ask her where she picked the berries.
"We go to the forest. We have ways. Now people are looking for places where they can pick berries and earn some money in the summer. Not everyone has a job here," the woman complains. She notes that there are no border guards near her to prevent her from entering the forest. But a little further away, at the border, there are already strict restrictions.
The conversation turned to the misfortune of someone getting blown up. A local woman complains: "People sometimes walk inattentively and don't notice the sign. Or they do notice it, but don't pay attention."
Not far from us, an old man laid out jars of honey – 150 hryvnias ($4) each – and herbs. A pensioner Nadiya approached with two buckets of currants.
She complains that even though it's a market day, there are few people here. The young people have left, and "the pensioners are staying in." I asked her if she had heard anything about landmine explosions in the spring. The woman shrugged her shoulders.
"Hey, where did a tractor explode in our neighborhood?" Nadiia asks her friend, who gets interested in berries.
"Wasn't it in Nenkovychi?" her friend replies.
"It happened three months ago. A tractor driver and another one next to him," an old man interrupts the conversation.
"They died?" Nadiya clarifies.
"He hit them with a trailer. They survived," he said.
"As long as people are alive, they’ll get by," the woman concludes.
From the news feed: On April 5, a tractor exploded on a mine on the borderline. Two civilians were wounded. They were lucky: only minor injuries. Local authorities reported that the driver ignored the "Danger - Mines" sign.
People are hardworking, everything is in order. They go to pick berries because they need to earn money. And how difficult it is to pick them in this heat! They go and earn money. There are mosquitoes, and you can trip something.Nadiya, a resident of the village of Zarichne in Rivne Oblast
Nadiya notes that locals even take their documents with them into the forest. She adds that they know about the fences beyond which they shouldn't go.
I ask if it's scary to live so close to Belarus. Someone nearby answers that he is used to it. Nadiya, on the other hand, is worried: "The radio announced that the Chinese are conducting exercises in Belarus on our border. So far, nothing has happened here, thank God. What will happen next?" However, fear immediately gives way to anger as the woman gets angry at the occupiers and suddenly starts crying in the middle of cursing.
We all live in war. We want it to end, we want the guys not to be returned dead, we want the youth to come back. The guys are being taken away, the cream of nation. And there are those who haven't even had children yet, cutting off their family line. May he die! May those who launched the rocket at 'Okhmatdyt' never see the light of day, down to the seventh generation.Nadiya, a resident of the village of Zarichne in Rivne Oblast
Signposts for firewood
After chatting to the locals, I go to meet with the border guards and the head of the village council, Bohdan Kvachuk. He assures me that the local authorities are constantly communicating with the population about mine safety and pointing out places that are out of bounds. Regional media were also contacted for this purpose.
The village head claims that the locals' attitude has changed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion: "Before, some people ignored the warning signs, but now everyone understands because there were examples when someone ignored them and got blown up. Now they realize that they should not go there."
The ban on visiting the forest is not a blanket one: border guards have identified areas where locals can go, in particular, to pick berries. But dangerous areas are strictly prohibited. Border guards patrol them. They say they have not caught any blueberry pickers on minefields so far.
Picking wild berries has remained the main source of income for many people. If there is a nice area adjacent to the border, people cannot go there now, they have to go the other way. However, those who have been picking berries continue to do so, because we have a lot of forest.Bohdan Kvachuk, head of the village council of Zarichne
Bohdan Kvachuk notes that explosions occur primarily due to neglect of warning signs. In order to reduce such incidents to a minimum, the local community is constantly talking about mine safety, especially with children.
Safety classes have already been opened in most schools, where students learn what a mine or grenade is and how to handle them. Next year, the schools are already looking for funds to open more such classes.
While talking to Bohdan Kvachuk, I remember that I never took a photo of the village center while the locals were selling vegetables and berries. I return there, but the scorching sun has already driven people home.
I didn't want to test my body's endurance to the street heat, so I hurriedly went to the editorial office of the local newspaper Polissya. I'm going to ask my colleagues for shelter from the heat and local secrets.
I meet Katya, a girl who works here as a camera operator and is taking photos for someone's documents. She jokes that she is a nurse by training. She directs me to the office of the editor-in-chief, Semen Polyukhovych.
He complains that, despite the progress in mine safety, the threat still arises again and again due to the banal lack of warning signs as wooden pegs and the signs themselves are destroyed over time or fall down in the rain and snow.
Signs should be periodically updated or made more durable. As you drive to the border villages, even the roadsides are mined. The locals know, but someone else may not be able to find their way.Semen Polyukhovych, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Polissya
He even recalls a completely comical incident when a woman took away signposts somewhere else in the area – apparently to get warm by burning them in a stove. Fortunately, it was noticed in time, and the signs were taken from her and returned to perform their important function.
The editorial office also recalled the case when locals who went to steal wood got blown up in Zarichne in December 2022. By the way, the failed thieves were fine. At the time, local authorities reported that they were detained when they ran away after the explosion. However, no criminal cases were opened against them, the police told us.
Does life go on?
Semen Polyukhovych suggested going to the village of Nenkovychi, where the border is less than 3 kilometers away. The locals used to go to the Belarusian village through the forest to get black bread. Now, of course, they have stopped this practice.
After a short drive, we get out of the sun-warmed car. A house nearby is guarded by storks from a pole. This is where Semen's mother-in-law and father-in-law live. While I'm enjoying the coolness of the sun, Svitlana serves me borsch and strikes up a conversation. She complains that private farming is suffering because of the ban on land use.
People are selling their cows because there is not enough hay and grazing. There is a river on the side of the border where locals used to fish, but now they can't either. They sowed grain in 2022, but did not grind it. So it stayed there, because in 2023 they were not allowed to go there.Svitlana, a resident of Nenkovychi village
However, she adds that although the situation has deteriorated significantly, they have enough to "feed themselves". "Life goes on. "The main thing is that there is no enemy here," Svitlana notes.
Meanwhile, local women have already laid out a dense line of greenery and flowers in the center of the dirt road. Several girls in black dresses and headscarves brought rowan trees, birch branches, and ferns. The flower trail stretched from the beginning of the village to a traditional Polissya wooden house. From there, it went on to the church and cemetery.
The fourth local who died in the all-out war will be buried in Nenkovychi. On one knee, I hear the women's cries getting louder as the police sirens, the harbingers of the funeral procession, approach. At that moment, I realize what it means to share a common grief.
A volley of blank shots rang out. "He's home now," one of the old ladies says quietly behind the crowd as the coffin is lowered into the ground. In the coffin lies soldier Volodymyr Demchuk, a young man in his thirties who was killed by a Russian air bomb in Kharkiv Oblast. His fellow villagers say about him: "He never hurt anyone in his life."
After seeing the hero off on his last journey, we walked back to Svitlana and Mykola's house in silence. The phrase of Nadiya from Zarichne kept coming to mind: "We all live in war". It seems like a small village among the forests a thousand kilometers from the front line. However, the war comes here too.