2024-08-01 14:41:28
“I was relieved when we crossed the border into Mongolia. It was worse in Russia than I expected,” says traveler Dan Přibáň about crossing more than 1,500 kilometers of Russian territory. In mid-April, he set off on an adventurous trip through Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and even Mongolia with two originally military Luaz 967 ambulances. For Aktuálně.cz, he described his impressions of the trip through Russia.
In the interview, Přibáň describes how the war in Ukraine changed Russia. “For Russians, war is quite a dangerous and hot topic. FSB worker (Russian Federal and Security Service – editor’s note) but he snooped on Ukrainian numbers in my mobile phone,” he says. The interview took place on Friday via Skype, Přibáň answered from western Mongolia a few hours after leaving Russia.
When you crossed the Russian side of the border, passed the sign of the Russian Federation and entered Mongolia, what were the feelings at that moment? Relief?
I didn’t expect it, but I was glad we were gone. I was hoping it would be cool, but it wasn’t pleasant. Even China, which we passed through in 2018, we were not so happy to leave. Yes, the Chinese are hot, we had to have a guide, but I didn’t feel like someone was so-called after us. We had that feeling this time in Russia.
Why?
When we were in Russia in 2007, they were terribly unpleasant. Everywhere they wanted bribes, they bullied us. In 2018, on the other hand, we drove completely fine, we didn’t even have any problems with the police. This year we felt their obsession with the war in Ukraine. The first thing they wanted at the border when we arrived from Kazakhstan was a questionnaire, which they called a survey. In it, they asked in detail and quite closely about many private things, the names of relatives and parents, what they do, dates of birth.
Then I was interviewed by a young man in civilian clothes who probably belonged to the FSB. First he repeated all the questions from that survey. He asked all sorts of questions and then suddenly blurted out what I thought about the war in Ukraine. I told him I thought she was bad. He continued by asking if everyone in the Czech Republic thinks so. I say yes, I think most. He didn’t say anything but looked disappointed. However, he let us go, we could go.
Where exactly was it?
On the Russian side of the border with Kazakhstan. Semey is the last big city of Kazakhstan, and if you continue further north, you will reach the Russian border and the first big Russian city is Veseloyarsk. It is interesting that when we met a couple of Slovaks in Russia, they said that they were not asked about the war at the border. They just wanted to know if there were Ukrainians in Slovakia.
It is also interesting that almost everywhere we went in Russia, people recognized the Slovak flags that we also have on our cars. That wasn’t the case before. They used to know the Czech flags, which they remembered as Czechoslovakian, but they did not recognize the flags of independent Slovakia. I don’t know what it is, if Slovakia isn’t somehow more popular in Russia now thanks to Robert Fico.
But to return to the control. He asked me if I knew anyone in Ukraine. I said not much. But he expertly punched in the Ukrainian area code in my mobile phone and found some numbers there, because I know a few people from Ukraine and we also have cars from Ukraine, so we looked for spare parts there. The other day I noticed an attempt to get into my WhatsApp. I don’t know if they were interested in the Ukrainian numbers or why.
Did you see the propaganda pro-war posters on the road or the letters Z, which are the symbol of the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Not as much as we expected. We saw “zetka” on cars that put people there by themselves, but it was a minority. When we turned further to the east, where there is an area from where they recruited many people to Ukraine, there were already more of those billboards. But it wasn’t really something massive that it would stare at you from every corner every few meters. We occasionally saw a photo of Putin in the pub, and here and there someone had a St. George’s ribbon in their car.
How did people react to you as Czechs and foreigners? You must have been a bit exotic there…
Sure, we’re into exotics everywhere with those cars. We didn’t have a problem with people. They asked who we were, what we were, but we did not notice any sign of hostility. Some were surprised that we drive such a distance with a Russian car, that they would not trust a Russian car so much. At the same time, our cars are made in Ukraine, but for the Russians it is completely Russian. When I said in one discussion that one of our cars is a negative from Ukraine, they said sarcastically: “Ukraine must not be talked about.” But no one told us what we think about Ukraine, it’s a hot and dangerous topic in Russia.
The police stopped us once more and we had to go with them to the station, about ten kilometers back. There, I was called again by a person who already said completely openly that he was from the FSB. He interrogated me for two hours and asked, for example, if we had a drone. I considered whether to admit that I did, and then I said that we did. He jumped as if I’d told him I had the keys to Putin’s office in the Kremlin, even though it’s not illegal to own a drone in Russia. And my cell phone was crawling again. After this interrogation I had had enough and was getting paranoid. And I was really looking forward to the moment when we get out of Russia.
Did they look at the cars when you left for Mongolia?
They looked, but only casually, it was nothing out of the ordinary. I was nervous, but luckily nothing happened. The difference between traveling in China and Russia is that in China everything is lined up, we had a guide. You never know what’s going to happen in Russia, it’s unpredictable there.
A lot of Russians fled to Kazakhstan after the mobilization was announced. Are there still queues at the border?
Nothing extraordinary, but the crossing is always there for several hours. We deliberately chose a smaller transition, however, even at this border, one realizes how beautiful it is that we can travel around Europe without problems or delays. The Russians have a traffic light before the crossing, which always lets several cars through. They look at luggage randomly. This was tougher in China, where our entire car had to be x-rayed.
We spent the most time on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, about eight hours. When it was our turn, it turned out that the customs officials were mainly checking local people, apparently there is widespread smuggling. Local people also had to take out the spare tires and the customs officials looked under the upholstery. But we were not interested in them and they let us go quickly.
Video: Yellow Frog Goes East (September 13, 2023)
Yellow frog goes east, trouble. | Video: Dan Přibáň