I’m still here…alive and kicking. Lots of military activity here in Belgorod with it being a staging area for troops into and out of the front lines.
I’m still here…alive and kicking. Lots of military activity here in Belgorod with it being a staging area for troops into and out of the front lines.
As you can tell from the fact that I’m here working, I have a bit of an adventurous personality. Last week it just about got me deported or at worse, thrown in a Russian prison! I was traveling with three Russian colleagues to visit a problematic production site near Rylsk. If you look at the map, there are two ways to go from Belgorod to Rylsk. One way is to go North on the M-2 (main highway to Moscow) towards Kursk and then head west to Rylsk. The other way is to skirt the Ukrainian border via Sudhza. Of course, we picked the latter. I was tracking our journey to the farm and noticed that we passed very close to the border just outside Sudhza…and that there was a village road from the highway to the border.
So on the way home, I had our driver hang a right off the highway at the village of Sverdlikovo. If you look at Google maps, you can see the village road looping around the village with a branch leading to the border. I guided the car through the small village and we got to the end of the road. You could see a barricade had been placed across the road and about 200 meters in the distance was the border fence. The road had been cut and barricaded back in 2014 when hostilities commenced over the annexation of Crimea. It was a lovely afternoon and the village was quite picturesque…
As we stood outside the car looking at the border (and of course I was taking photos with my phone), out of nowhere appeared two Russian soldiers with assault rifles pointed right at us! They wanted to know what we were doing in the Exclusion Zone. There is no entry to this 5 km zone along the border without a pass issued from the local security services and foreign nationals are expressly forbidden! Their lieutenant appeared and he was not impressed with our trespassing and especially became quite irritated when he saw my US passport.
He assisted he had to call his superiors to find out what to do with us…at that point I figured his options were to let us go or shoot us as spies. So there we waited under guard and after a few minutes, the two soldiers seemed to relax as soon as they moved us out of sight of the border fence. The reason…snipers had been shooting at them for the last few days from the other side of the fence and a few random artillery rounds had fallen in the area. So here we were…three soldiers including one officer and four idiots right out in the open along with a very white car. Perfect targets for snipers or an artillery spotter!
About an hour later, off in the distance from the village, I see an army vehicle approaching. It got to our location and four soldiers got out led by a Colonel. They inspected the car and looked at our passports. Some questioning about what we were doing there and didn’t we know it was an exclusion zone. Then came the moment of anxiety. The Colonel instructed one of his soldiers to ride in the car with my three Russian colleagues and I was placed in the army vehicle at gunpoint.
Off we went to Sudhza to the army HQ and FSB (new KGB) office. About halfway there, the Colonel turned to me and said, “Andrew..you in big trouble”. So here I was separated from colleagues, in a Russian military vehicle with a Colonel, under guard at gunpoint, heading to a freakin’ FSB office. Needless to say, I was beginning to regret my curious nature.
We arrived at the army base…passed through a few secure gates and then led into the FSB headquarters. They let my translator come with me and the other two were segregated into another interrogation room.
I’ll finish the rest of the story tomorrow…
Doood, what you is doing?I’m still here…alive and kicking. Lots of military activity here in Belgorod with it being a staging area for troops into and out of the front lines.
As you can tell from the fact that I’m here working, I have a bit of an adventurous personality. Last week it just about got me deported or at worse, thrown in a Russian prison! I was traveling with three Russian colleagues to visit a problematic production site near Rylsk. If you look at the map, there are two ways to go from Belgorod to Rylsk. One way is to go North on the M-2 (main highway to Moscow) towards Kursk and then head west to Rylsk. The other way is to skirt the Ukrainian border via Sudhza. Of course, we picked the latter. I was tracking our journey to the farm and noticed that we passed very close to the border just outside Sudhza…and that there was a village road from the highway to the border.
So on the way home, I had our driver hang a right off the highway at the village of Sverdlikovo. If you look at Google maps, you can see the village road looping around the village with a branch leading to the border. I guided the car through the small village and we got to the end of the road. You could see a barricade had been placed across the road and about 200 meters in the distance was the border fence. The road had been cut and barricaded back in 2014 when hostilities commenced over the annexation of Crimea. It was a lovely afternoon and the village was quite picturesque…
As we stood outside the car looking at the border (and of course I was taking photos with my phone), out of nowhere appeared two Russian soldiers with assault rifles pointed right at us! They wanted to know what we were doing in the Exclusion Zone. There is no entry to this 5 km zone along the border without a pass issued from the local security services and foreign nationals are expressly forbidden! Their lieutenant appeared and he was not impressed with our trespassing and especially became quite irritated when he saw my US passport.
He insisted that he had to call his superiors to find out what to do with us…at that point I figured his options were to let us go or shoot us as spies. So there we waited under guard and after a few minutes, the two soldiers seemed to relax as soon as they moved us out of sight of the border fence. The reason…snipers had been shooting at them for the last few days from the other side of the fence and a few random artillery rounds had fallen in the area. So here we were…three soldiers including one officer and four idiots right out in the open along with a very white car. Perfect targets for snipers or an artillery spotter!
About an hour later, off in the distance from the village, I see an army vehicle approaching. It got to our location and four soldiers got out led by a Colonel. They inspected the car and looked at our passports. Some questioning about what we were doing there and didn’t we know it was an exclusion zone. Then came the moment of anxiety. The Colonel instructed one of his soldiers to ride in the car with my three Russian colleagues and I was placed in the army vehicle at gunpoint.
Off we went to Sudhza to the army HQ and FSB (new KGB) office. About halfway there, the Colonel turned to me and said, “Andrew..you in big trouble”. So here I was separated from colleagues, in a Russian military vehicle with a Colonel, under guard at gunpoint, heading to a freakin’ FSB office. Needless to say, I was beginning to regret my curious nature.
We arrived at the army base…passed through a few secure gates and then led into the FSB headquarters. They let my translator come with me and the other two were segregated into another interrogation room.
I’ll finish the rest of the story tomorrow…
Man, I'm calling my superiors and saying "bring me the fork home... NOW!!!"I’m still here…alive and kicking. Lots of military activity here in Belgorod with it being a staging area for troops into and out of the front lines.
As you can tell from the fact that I’m here working, I have a bit of an adventurous personality. Last week it just about got me deported or at worse, thrown in a Russian prison! I was traveling with three Russian colleagues to visit a problematic production site near Rylsk. If you look at the map, there are two ways to go from Belgorod to Rylsk. One way is to go North on the M-2 (main highway to Moscow) towards Kursk and then head west to Rylsk. The other way is to skirt the Ukrainian border via Sudhza. Of course, we picked the latter. I was tracking our journey to the farm and noticed that we passed very close to the border just outside Sudhza…and that there was a village road from the highway to the border.
So on the way home, I had our driver hang a right off the highway at the village of Sverdlikovo. If you look at Google maps, you can see the village road looping around the village with a branch leading to the border. I guided the car through the small village and we got to the end of the road. You could see a barricade had been placed across the road and about 200 meters in the distance was the border fence. The road had been cut and barricaded back in 2014 when hostilities commenced over the annexation of Crimea. It was a lovely afternoon and the village was quite picturesque…
As we stood outside the car looking at the border (and of course I was taking photos with my phone), out of nowhere appeared two Russian soldiers with assault rifles pointed right at us! They wanted to know what we were doing in the Exclusion Zone. There is no entry to this 5 km zone along the border without a pass issued from the local security services and foreign nationals are expressly forbidden! Their lieutenant appeared and he was not impressed with our trespassing and especially became quite irritated when he saw my US passport.
He insisted that he had to call his superiors to find out what to do with us…at that point I figured his options were to let us go or shoot us as spies. So there we waited under guard and after a few minutes, the two soldiers seemed to relax as soon as they moved us out of sight of the border fence. The reason…snipers had been shooting at them for the last few days from the other side of the fence and a few random artillery rounds had fallen in the area. So here we were…three soldiers including one officer and four idiots right out in the open along with a very white car. Perfect targets for snipers or an artillery spotter!
About an hour later, off in the distance from the village, I see an army vehicle approaching. It got to our location and four soldiers got out led by a Colonel. They inspected the car and looked at our passports. Some questioning about what we were doing there and didn’t we know it was an exclusion zone. Then came the moment of anxiety. The Colonel instructed one of his soldiers to ride in the car with my three Russian colleagues and I was placed in the army vehicle at gunpoint.
Off we went to Sudhza to the army HQ and FSB (new KGB) office. About halfway there, the Colonel turned to me and said, “Andrew..you in big trouble”. So here I was separated from colleagues, in a Russian military vehicle with a Colonel, under guard at gunpoint, heading to a freakin’ FSB office. Needless to say, I was beginning to regret my curious nature.
We arrived at the army base…passed through a few secure gates and then led into the FSB headquarters. They let my translator come with me and the other two were segregated into another interrogation room.
I’ll finish the rest of the story tomorrow…
I love a cliffhanger!!!I’m still here…alive and kicking. Lots of military activity here in Belgorod with it being a staging area for troops into and out of the front lines.
As you can tell from the fact that I’m here working, I have a bit of an adventurous personality. Last week it just about got me deported or at worse, thrown in a Russian prison! I was traveling with three Russian colleagues to visit a problematic production site near Rylsk. If you look at the map, there are two ways to go from Belgorod to Rylsk. One way is to go North on the M-2 (main highway to Moscow) towards Kursk and then head west to Rylsk. The other way is to skirt the Ukrainian border via Sudhza. Of course, we picked the latter. I was tracking our journey to the farm and noticed that we passed very close to the border just outside Sudhza…and that there was a village road from the highway to the border.
So on the way home, I had our driver hang a right off the highway at the village of Sverdlikovo. If you look at Google maps, you can see the village road looping around the village with a branch leading to the border. I guided the car through the small village and we got to the end of the road. You could see a barricade had been placed across the road and about 200 meters in the distance was the border fence. The road had been cut and barricaded back in 2014 when hostilities commenced over the annexation of Crimea. It was a lovely afternoon and the village was quite picturesque…
As we stood outside the car looking at the border (and of course I was taking photos with my phone), out of nowhere appeared two Russian soldiers with assault rifles pointed right at us! They wanted to know what we were doing in the Exclusion Zone. There is no entry to this 5 km zone along the border without a pass issued from the local security services and foreign nationals are expressly forbidden! Their lieutenant appeared and he was not impressed with our trespassing and especially became quite irritated when he saw my US passport.
He insisted that he had to call his superiors to find out what to do with us…at that point I figured his options were to let us go or shoot us as spies. So there we waited under guard and after a few minutes, the two soldiers seemed to relax as soon as they moved us out of sight of the border fence. The reason…snipers had been shooting at them for the last few days from the other side of the fence and a few random artillery rounds had fallen in the area. So here we were…three soldiers including one officer and four idiots right out in the open along with a very white car. Perfect targets for snipers or an artillery spotter!
About an hour later, off in the distance from the village, I see an army vehicle approaching. It got to our location and four soldiers got out led by a Colonel. They inspected the car and looked at our passports. Some questioning about what we were doing there and didn’t we know it was an exclusion zone. Then came the moment of anxiety. The Colonel instructed one of his soldiers to ride in the car with my three Russian colleagues and I was placed in the army vehicle at gunpoint.
Off we went to Sudhza to the army HQ and FSB (new KGB) office. About halfway there, the Colonel turned to me and said, “Andrew..you in big trouble”. So here I was separated from colleagues, in a Russian military vehicle with a Colonel, under guard at gunpoint, heading to a freakin’ FSB office. Needless to say, I was beginning to regret my curious nature.
We arrived at the army base…passed through a few secure gates and then led into the FSB headquarters. They let my translator come with me and the other two were segregated into another interrogation room.
I’ll finish the rest of the story tomorrow…
Dude, you HAVE heard the story about curiosity and the cat?!I’m still here…alive and kicking. Lots of military activity here in Belgorod with it being a staging area for troops into and out of the front lines.
As you can tell from the fact that I’m here working, I have a bit of an adventurous personality. Last week it just about got me deported or at worse, thrown in a Russian prison! I was traveling with three Russian colleagues to visit a problematic production site near Rylsk. If you look at the map, there are two ways to go from Belgorod to Rylsk. One way is to go North on the M-2 (main highway to Moscow) towards Kursk and then head west to Rylsk. The other way is to skirt the Ukrainian border via Sudhza. Of course, we picked the latter. I was tracking our journey to the farm and noticed that we passed very close to the border just outside Sudhza…and that there was a village road from the highway to the border.
So on the way home, I had our driver hang a right off the highway at the village of Sverdlikovo. If you look at Google maps, you can see the village road looping around the village with a branch leading to the border. I guided the car through the small village and we got to the end of the road. You could see a barricade had been placed across the road and about 200 meters in the distance was the border fence. The road had been cut and barricaded back in 2014 when hostilities commenced over the annexation of Crimea. It was a lovely afternoon and the village was quite picturesque…
As we stood outside the car looking at the border (and of course I was taking photos with my phone), out of nowhere appeared two Russian soldiers with assault rifles pointed right at us! They wanted to know what we were doing in the Exclusion Zone. There is no entry to this 5 km zone along the border without a pass issued from the local security services and foreign nationals are expressly forbidden! Their lieutenant appeared and he was not impressed with our trespassing and especially became quite irritated when he saw my US passport.
He insisted that he had to call his superiors to find out what to do with us…at that point I figured his options were to let us go or shoot us as spies. So there we waited under guard and after a few minutes, the two soldiers seemed to relax as soon as they moved us out of sight of the border fence. The reason…snipers had been shooting at them for the last few days from the other side of the fence and a few random artillery rounds had fallen in the area. So here we were…three soldiers including one officer and four idiots right out in the open along with a very white car. Perfect targets for snipers or an artillery spotter!
About an hour later, off in the distance from the village, I see an army vehicle approaching. It got to our location and four soldiers got out led by a Colonel. They inspected the car and looked at our passports. Some questioning about what we were doing there and didn’t we know it was an exclusion zone. Then came the moment of anxiety. The Colonel instructed one of his soldiers to ride in the car with my three Russian colleagues and I was placed in the army vehicle at gunpoint.
Off we went to Sudhza to the army HQ and FSB (new KGB) office. About halfway there, the Colonel turned to me and said, “Andrew..you in big trouble”. So here I was separated from colleagues, in a Russian military vehicle with a Colonel, under guard at gunpoint, heading to a freakin’ FSB office. Needless to say, I was beginning to regret my curious nature.
We arrived at the army base…passed through a few secure gates and then led into the FSB headquarters. They let my translator come with me and the other two were segregated into another interrogation room.
I’ll finish the rest of the story tomorrow…
Is that Dan Carlin / Hard Core History?
I'm glad you're fine, but who do you think you are, Paul Harvey? I want to know the rest of the story.I’ll finish the rest of the story tomorrow…
I'm not sure the same mentality exists in the Russian psyche now.
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