Greetings From Gelendzhik

Irina Khalip
19.06.2026, 10:11
5,322

So wasn't Dovlatov right?

These days, everyone is writing and thinking about one thing—those children from Rechitsa who were on their way to the seaside but ended up in the hospital. No trip to the sea, their summer is ruined, and as for psychological trauma—there’s no need to even mention it. It’s unlikely the young soccer players were warned that a drone or a landmine awaited them as part of their adventure along the way. And they certainly weren’t told that Victoria, the group’s chaperone, could die, just like any one of them.

Now we blame the regime, the parents, the coach, the teachers, the transportation company—everyone. And Russia, of course. I’m sorry, but let’s be honest. Remember the numerous discussions surrounding different approaches to prose about the Gulag? Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov asserted in their books that the camp was hell. But Dovlatov argued that hell is us. Well, I’m inclined to think that Dovlatov is right after all. Hell is us. That’s exactly why the children from Rechitsa ended up on that bus.

I open Belarusian travel websites and see ads for trips to Crimea. Buses leave for Crimea every five days. They travel through Orel, Voronezh, and Rostov-on-Don. “We’ll find you the best vacation option in Crimea!” the ads entice. “We know everything about Crimea and will reveal this gem to you!”—the travel agencies swear. “Our buses are equipped with air conditioning, power outlets, and a TV!”—they promise entertainment along the way.

I won’t write about the occupied territory or the fuel crisis: even those who buy tours to Crimea know about the occupation, and the fuel crisis isn’t all that interesting to bus tourists. Although that’s a mistake: even if no drone or rocket hits the beach and all the tourists survive their vacation, there’s no guarantee the bus will be able to refuel for the return trip.

Incidentally, if you look at the history of drone attacks, all the cities through which Belarusian travel agencies transport tourists to Crimea are targets. And Voronezh and Rostov have, to some extent, already become war memes. But Belarusian travel agencies keep sending people there, and Belarusian tourists are eager to go. The former enthusiastically describe quiet, cozy hotels with playgrounds and clubs with lively, noisy parties, while the latter pull out their wallets and then board a bus traveling through southern Russia—where not a day goes by without shelling—to the occupied territory with checkpoints, nighttime attacks, and explosions.

Incidentally, Belarus’s main tourism portal offers 1,219 tours to Russia. Whether to oil-stained Tuapse and Anapa, to Sochi—where people sit for days on end in an airport closed due to drones—to Gelendzhik, or to Grozny. Yes, it turns out that Grozny is now also one of the tourist destinations for Belarusian tourists.

In Sochi, by the way, they’re strongly encouraging people to travel by train—via Bryansk, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, and Krasnodar. All the stop names sound like they’re straight out of a war report. Has the train carrying tourists to the resort ever come under fire? Until this week, buses carrying children had somehow managed to avoid it as well. By the way, they’re also offering bus trips, modestly noting “transit through the territory of the Russian Federation.” For those who understand what it means to pass through Voronezh these days, Belarusian travel agencies also have plenty of offers: 2,397 tours to Turkey departing from Moscow or 2,079 tours to Thailand departing from the same city. From that very Moscow where an oil refinery was ablaze yesterday, and 500 flights were canceled due to the no-fly zone. Lucky for those who were supposed to fly to Nizhny Tagil on a business trip—a legitimate excuse to skip it. But in mid-June, surely half the passengers are vacationers. Perhaps even our compatriots who bought a tour departing from Moscow.

So what do buses to Crimea and trains to Sochi have to do with the poor, suffering children from Rechitsa, one might ask? The most direct connection—that’s exactly the point. It turns out that throughout all the years of war and occupation, it was the norm for many Belarusians to travel to the occupied zone, vacation on the beaches of the aggressor country, and spend money there that would go toward the military-industrial complex. And the issue isn’t even that there are no longer any safe places left in Russia and drones could strike anywhere—whether in the north, the south, or the capital. The issue lies elsewhere. If vacation trips to a country that kills Ukrainians weren’t the norm for many, then there wouldn’t have been any children on that bus. It simply wouldn’t have existed as a phenomenon: neither the bus, nor the route, nor the very idea of “taking the kids to Gelendzhik”. Demand creates supply. A travel agent doesn’t come to your house and force you, at gunpoint, to go to Gelendzhik. It’s all done on our own, all voluntarily. Then we start blaming irresponsible parents and teachers.

Greetings From Gelendzhik

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