Insiders or Strangers? Changing Cross-Border Practices and Attitudes Towards Neighbors in Belgorod and Rostov Regions of Russia after 2014

Abstract

The article examines how the armed conflict in the east of Ukraine and the sharp break in official relations between the two States affected the situation in the Russian-Ukrainian borderland and the daily life of local population. In five Russian border towns, on two sections of the border in Rostov (Gukovo, Donetsk and Matveev Kurgan) and Belgorod regions (Grayvoron, Shebekino), a series of in-depth interviews with local residents and municipal authorities was used to study the dynamics of cross-border practices after 2014, as well as the attitude of people towards the border, its regime, neighbors and the neighboring state. The study showed that a radical change in cross-border practices and the transformation of former neighborly relations, increasing the peripherization of small border towns and hindering communication, launched the process of recognizing the borders between Russia and Ukraine and dividing the two spaces in different ways. The transformation of the border on the map into a perceived and experienced border on the ground leads to a double peripherization in an already peripheral borderland. Both of the analyzed border sections develop from a rather integrated borderland into a coexistent borderland, but they do this in different ways.