THIRD DAY: BELARUS AND UKRAINE

At the fuel stations you need to fill the 95th, which seems to be of a good quality’s, because engines sing songs of praise. Anyway it is at least two levels above fuel in Russia. As a supplementary bonus is the price – it is cheaper by one third than in Latvia!

Border control point from Belarus side to Ukraine is named Novaja Guta. We are first in the line, but process of document formation takes us two hours. Ukrainian borderguard’s first question is – are we related to Russian “Night Wolves”? Our surnames are checked and after a brief moment we enter the terminal. Improvised interrogation continues. We are helped by the fact that we have printed the ferry reservation from Illichevsk. It is being accurately scanned and copied. Unlike in Belarus in you don’t need to fill the declaration for motorbikes. Custom’s officers don’t even come to our bikes and let us in their homeland.

Few kilometres away we are stopped at the blockpost, where heavily armed officers and soldiers of Ukraine’s army start conversation about social topics. Attitude is favorable and positive. We wish them to have a peace as soon as possible in their war plagued land. Ukrains don’t need much time to reply wishing us never to run out of songs and liquor. The roads are totally different in Ukraine as they were in Belarus – quality is a lot worse, chaos everywhere. We understand – the state has other priorities at the moment. 

Not far from Chernigov we encounter local police for the first time. Attitude is hard to understand – brutal and shameless money recketeering scheme forcing us to pay for exceeding speeding limits, which we did not, and threatening to revoke our driver’s licenses. We already had an unpleasant experience with Ukrainian police two years ago when we rode to Romania. Conclusion – situation is still the same. 

20 km before Kiev at the side of the road we find a hotel. People on streets come to start conversations, when they hear we are from Latvia. Everybody is in patriotic mood.