The road where people get lost
At 8 in the morning, a new SIMAZ bus covered in the “Z” symbol stickers departs from Simferopol, a major city in Crimea, to Melitopol, a city in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region currently occupied by Russia. There are a lot of TV cameras around. Oksana Mazur from the local coach company, and Nikolay Lukashenko, Crimea’s interim minister of transportation, explain the procedure of crossing the border between Crimea and Ukraine’s Kherson region, also occupied by Russia.
Most of the passengers are Ukrainian nationals. Some are returning home, others seek to retrieve their belongings or see their family members. Those who have Russian passports mostly go to Melitopol to bring their relatives medicines; one of the families came here from Russia’s Far East to do so.
It takes two and a half hours to get from Simferopol to Chonhar where a border checkpoint is located. Arriving in Chonhar, I see Crimean TV cameras again. A vigorous reporter is trying to convince someone to speak on camera about the trip.