Overnight on 14 May, soldiers at the Novotroitske crossing in Donbas heard a mine explode. The next morning, a woman crawled over to the Ukrainian position - her foot had been blown off by a Russian anti-infantry mine. As reported by Ukrainian soldiers, the woman was well-dressed and talked in detail about how she had travelled to Moscow for a training course, how she wound up in Donetsk - and why she needed to go home to Avdiivka, some 60km north. She also told them which documents could be found in her bag. The only thing the woman couldn’t do was explain why she had decided to walk out into a minefield from Dokuchayevsk - a town on the wrong side of Donetsk if you want to go to Avdiivka. Her bag, as it turned out, was empty.
Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, both sides in the conflict - Ukrainian and pro-Russian - have closed the crossing points in Donbas. Previously, thousands of people would cross the frontline on a daily basis, but now this has come to an end. This has made local life significantly more difficult, affecting the economy of the frontline territories. Since war broke out in 2014, a network of businesses and infrastructure has emerged to serve the stream of people and vehicles crossing the line of contact. There were five crossing points between the two sides, and each one had its own recent history, logistics and corruption. Now these crossings are being negotiated over.
Official permission for people to travel to the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (“DNR) and back was renewed on 22 and 25 June, but the way the crossings have been organised raises many questions. An electronic system of registration, the application procedure for entry, the mandatory quarantine in “DNR” hospitals and other innovations significantly limit the number of people who can travel. This has forced them to take extreme measures, including sleeping at checkpoints.
