I was planning to drive straight across Ukraine and enter Russia from a small border east of Luhansk. I have friends in Kharkiv and Donetsk, but if the situation will be as it is now, I think I'll have to re-route.

Good to know that the Hlukhiv - Kursk border is open, it seems that Chernihiv and Sumy Regions are not (yet?) affected.

Worth noting that there is a three-way border between UA, BY and RU north of Chernihiv which is (according to the Russian Government) open to foreigners. It leads to the far west of Bryansk Region (not far from a Chernobyl fallout area!), which would be the westernmost UA - RU crossing, were things to deteriorate further in Eastern Ukraine.

D

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Last year i entered this small border east of Luhansk, fast and friendly no problems.

Insurance shop in huts just about 1km up the road, also if you are nice the 2 pretty women who work there will let you use there computer to check emails and make you a cup of coffee

Nick:

I've never entered Russia on a motorcycle, but I have entered the country (for transit purposes) about a dozen times during the past 2 years whilst flying large commercial aircraft that I am delivering from the factory to the customer.

My experience with the Russian customs and immigration people (primarily in the east of the country - Anadyr, Magadan, Petropavlovsk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok) has been that they are very courteous and very honest, but also very, very detail-oriented. In other words, they are fine people who have no intention of giving anyone a hard time, but you had better be sure that 100% of your documentation is in order, because they cannot cut you any slack at all if there is even the tiniest deficiency in the documentation or process.

The Russian border guards have a very sophisticated electronic system for registering passports, visas, etc. The nature of this system is that the 'approval' is granted by a central computer somewhere after the border guards have scanned the passport and visa - the officer himself has no discretion in the matter.

I don't know what the deal on carnets is. A carnet is not needed to move a large commercial aircraft through the country, but at the point of entry, I was always given a document - sort of what you could call a Laissez-Passer for the aircraft itself - that I had to surrender at the port where I exited Russia. The border officials at the port of entry always stressed to me that it was extremely important that I not lose this document, and that I made sure to surrender it at the port of exit. Likewise, whenever I filed a flight plan to depart from Russia, the border guards at the exit point always asked for this document, and would not let me start the aircraft up until they had entered everything into the computer and received an approval from the central document processing facility.

So, to sum up: Very courteous people, but extremely thorough, and they are not granted any room for discretionary judgement when enforcing the rules.

Michael