OK well I've just returned to Poland having been refused entry into Russia on the Ukranian border, we are travelling with two bikes in a trailer and a towcar, we have all documents but were told we cannot visit russia with this arrangement, I was half expecting difficulties to be overcome with presents but the opportunity did not seem to present itself and having passed through russian passport control my passport was returned with an annulled stamp across the passport controls stamp.

I took the border crossings near Chelm in Poland into the Ukraine and Kharkov as the attempted egress into Russia.

5 hours to cross into Ukraine from Poland

7.5 hours from trying to leave Ukraine to re-entering on the same transit visa after a lovely wait in no mans land

The western side I found the border guards helpful (ish) and the police whilst stopping us did not try and extract bribes

Getting near Kiev and onwards they were persistent like the mosquitoes, as soon as they clocked the foreign plates on the car they were waving to pull us over, this lengthened the journey massively as each time the tired game of checking everything and even going into the police station to be breathalysed where i was told I had a positive result (clearly a lie as was the policemans claim that the woman administrator in the station was a medical doctor) obviously the game is dollars, we didnt have any and frankly the ukrainian police should invent a word for it as it makes it easy to understand their intent when they talk amongst themselves.

On the return leg I took to simply ignoring them and driving through, If you get shot it's not my responsibility but I can say I passed maybe 8 checkpoints this way without being followed, The police seem lazy and corrupt

I didnt have insurance, one police officer asked for it near poland, I just gave him random bits of official paper until he got bored.


Not keen on the 2 days and 40 hours driving I did in the Ukraine, gonna go look at my finances and consider getting into russia through Latvia

hope this info helps someone and your border crossing is easier