Taras Kuzio’s Blog

International Travel

International travel is no longer as glamourous as it used to be. We can blame the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington for this to some extent. But, not in the case of Ukraine. Here little has changed after the Orange Revolution with the exception that EU, US and Canadian citizens no longer need visas to travel to Ukraine.
I first flew into Kyiv in September 1991 for which I can thank a failed coup in Moscow. The KGB were presumably in hiding. Prior to the coup I had been on a KGB blacklist because of my “anti-Soviet activities” as I ran the Ukrainian Press Agency (UPA) in London with branches in Kyiv, Warsaw and Moscow. As late as 1990 the Soviet Ukrainian media was attacking me as a “bourgeois nationalist” and “CIA hireling”. To reach Kyiv in 1991 you had to fly through Moscow. A colleague with whom I worked in Kyiv’s UPA met me in Moscow. Our flight to Kyiv was cancelled until the morning and we spent the night in a Moscow airport sharing a bottle of whisky. He is now living in Toronto.
Kyiv’s airport has changed considerably since then. The old Soviet structure has been given a new post-Soviet face, with the obligatory Irish-run Duty Free shop and Irish pub. Security has also been stepped up. Back in 1992 I traveled back to England with 40 or so older generation Ukrainians who had attended the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of UPA (not the subversive organization I had led but the 1940s partisan movement). They had all been given Hutsul sokiry (axes) as gifts and Ukrainian security in Borispil Airport saw no problem in allowing them on board the flight to Vienna (this was still before direct flights began from London to Kyiv in November 1992 by the Irish-run Ukraine International Airlines). I did not carry an axe as I had not attended the UPA commemoration, but I had instead a large Cossack sword that I had purchased as a souvenir. So, you can imagine the look on the Austrian security guards in Vienna when they saw 40 men approaching them with axes and a sword! These were all confiscated and returned to us only after we landed in London.
Security in Kyiv’s Borispil is now tighter and we would no longer be allowed to travel with axes and swords as personal hand luggage. But, other things have not changed. It has always been unpleasant to fly out of Ukraine because of the unusual procedures. No other country, apart from Israel, has Customs checks before you register for your flight. What is the point, I asked a Customs officer in the Kuchma era when I was flying home, of asking us if we have any expensive presents or if we have any foreign currency when senior Ukrainian officials are stealing billions? She took one look at me and said, “go ahead”. I am still not sure why the Ukrainian customs form asks you how much money you are bringing into Ukraine? In North America it asks you only if you are bringing in more than $10,000 which means it needs to be declared.
After checking into your flight the ordeal is not over! You go upstairs to passport control but before you reach it two customs officers ask you again, but sheepishly, if you have any currency and presents. When you fly outside Canada, USA and UK there is no passport control. Not in Ukraine – you have to remember to save an unimpressive looking form that you completed on entering Ukraine. The form is collected back by the Border Troop officer checking passports and he can get quite angry if you have used it as a beer mat or lost it. It would be nice if the form was re-designed with official Ukrainian symbols as it currently looks like rather cheap.
Ukraine is certainly heading towards Europe, especially compared to 1991-1992, but at its own slow Chumatsky Shliakh.