Volovets was never a place I had thought about going to only two months ago, but here I was in an old car on a ragged road leading to it. Given that my native habitat was the rolling plains of Minnesota, one would think that the Carpathians would look outright amazing to me. In truth, once you’ve lived in the Caucasus as I have, everything seems like big hills in comparison. For a first time in the true highlands, it was also not a particularly pleasant experience due to the anxiety of the situation. Lush green forests and low-flowing rivers admittedly scattered the landscape with the beauty that could not be fully enjoyed in the moment.

More soldiers, police, and cargo vans were present than anywhere else I had seen yet in Ukraine. This was of course one of the main transit roads for army supplies from NATO countries into the interior of the country. In terms of our safety, this did not exactly bode well. As we drew closer to the border with Galicia, I also got the opportunity to see my first UPA flag in the wild.  Even with the terrible war I still felt a deep inner revulsion toward the black and red colors and the trident so often seen on each soldier’s arm. I didn’t and still don’t care what any apologist has to say on the matter. To me, they were little more than colonizers in a land that had not been theirs until it was annexed by the Soviet Union. How fitting that both sides of this current war had screwed us over in different ways. Why couldn’t our predecessors have been at least competent in something? Native Transcarpathian Rusyns probably have a less extreme opinion.

We reached multiple heavily guarded checkpoints on our route further into the highlands, but to our surprise, not a single one stopped us to check documents. Every time our driver would begin to slow down the guards would look at each other and merely wave us through. During this time not a single other car got this kind of good treatment. Whether this was due to pure luck or because of another reason I cannot truly say. Multiple strange occurrences happened in my travels through this land, from being followed around town to seemingly getting into places with no hassle at all. In a sense, it added a degree of surrealism that only made me feel more paranoid.  

The town of Volovets was the only piece of land in Transcarpathia that had been touched by Russian military power. By American standards, no one would call it a village, but as I discovered even a town with five thousand people could be considered as such here. The place was incased within a bowl-like valley, with a railroad splitting it into roughly a third on the far side, and two-thirds in front. Most of the architecture was horrid commie-blocks or other plain designs invoking a sense of mediocrity. It was this railroad track in the middle that had been hit by a targeted missile a month or so back. Nobody was killed, but it was as if the war had finally reached Rusyns in a way not felt before. Almost immediately as we arrived the reality of the locals and their attitudes became apparent. The first man who had likely hopped on a train to here had essentially told us to go fuck ourselves when we asked him questions about the town. Others would give minimal responses or refuse to answer anything specific about the day of the attack even after we identified ourselves as western journalists. Groups of new recruits paraded around chanting as if they were just learning the basics and did not bother us once. They would probably be sent off soon enough to the frontlines with little training or equipment. A new crop of young men from Transcarpathia was to be used as cannon fodder. The same could be said for everywhere else in Ukraine for that matter.

In a brief moment of courage, we actually walked up and into the railroad station itself. The thing was an open-air setup essentially, with tons of tracks with trains just a few lines across from us. As far as we could tell, there was no damage to anything within the station itself. Either they had fixed whatever had been blown up, or the blast had been a ways from here. I feel comfortable enough posting a picture of the railway given that there was no damage to this section.

After walking around the city for a bit more we decided to stop by the local Orthodox church right across from the military barracks in the hopes of getting someone reasonable for an interview. As I would soon learn by the end of this trip, priests were somehow always available and willing to talk. The man himself was a native to Transcarpathia and had done some of his earlier career duties as a priest in a port city on the southern coast of Ukraine. He talked very highly about the Ukrainian military and the fight to defeat the Russian forces. After a while, my translator began talking to the man on his own and I stepped out to gaze at the mountain peaks around me. It was one of the few moments I truly felt a sense of awe.

We stayed for a bit more, thanked the man for his time, and then left back to the city of Mukachevo. As my first true journalism experience, I have chalked it up as a complete failure. How I thought it would go was nothing like how it had. This was largely the fault of my own misconceptions, ones that would also plague me later when the news site I had come to Ukraine to write for refused to print anything with the word Rusyn in it. This was effectively going back on our agreement from earlier and the reason why nothing has been published there. Regardless of these external issues, this expedition put the reality of the war into a perspective that one could not get far away in Uzhhorod. Even after only one missile, you could feel the tension oozing out of everything. The people’s moods in many ways matched the decrepit estates left to rot in various corners of the town. There was not much happiness to be had here right now.

As the great peaks of the highlands disappeared into the background so too did the surreal feeling from before. It was almost as if everything was now a reasonable degree of normal again for whatever that meant. I came away with few thoughts except for one that kept me up late into the night. It was the desire that nobody, whether they were Rusyn or Ukrainian or Hungarian, would have to live under such a heavy blanket of terror as I had felt from the people there. It was a hope that the war would be over soon.