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House in Narva – the EU ends 500 meters to the east
Photo: Aaron Urb / DER SPIEGEL
Two bicycle tires, a blanket, a dented box, a large backpack, and a brown belt that holds the luggage together.
That's all Anton Kuzmin, 28, still owns.
The Ukrainian is five meters from the Estonian EU external border in Narva.
The evening sun is reflected in the snow on the opposite hill.
That's where Russia begins.
Kuzmin says he lived over there for eight years.
Born in Crimea, he suddenly “woke up in Russia” in 2014, as he puts it.
His life was never the same after that.
The mother in Mariupol suddenly lived in another country - at least according to the Russian interpretation.
A Russian friend advised him to go to Saint Petersburg anyway.
There are many options there.
Kuzmin followed him, met a local woman, had a child with her.
Kuzmin found work as a bicycle courier.
For a while he thought everything would be fine, he says sadly.
Then last week the war came back.
Kuzmin says he hasn't heard from his mother for two days.
He doesn't know how she's doing.
He looks into the evening sun with big brown eyes, there is a noticeable gap in his lower row of teeth.
Kuzmin does not want to say exactly why he finally left his girlfriend and child.
But one can perhaps imagine what they had recently argued about.
He just says, "It wasn't good anymore."
The Russian friend had to turn back
Now he is in Narva, in the very east of Estonia, once part of the Soviet Empire.
It was four to five hours by bus from Saint Petersburg.
Kuzim says his Russian friend had to turn back without a valid vaccination card.
As a Ukrainian, he was simply waved through.
He now wants to continue to Poznań via Tallinn.
There, says Kuzmin, he hopes to start a new life with friends without Ukrainians and Russians.
"My first cry for despair was nothing compared to my current silence," is currently in his profile on Messenger Telegram.
"The war is destroying everything," Kuzmin murmurs and continues to move across the icy ground towards Europe with his bicycle parts.
If you have money, you go to Helsinki – if you don't, you go to Narva
Thousands like him are currently crossing the border from Russia.
If you have money, you can take the express train further north to Helsinki and from there take a plane into the world.
Those who have no money and only friends in Eastern Europe go to Narva.
It's not a big crowd, but a constant stream.
As if from a vessel that has been cracked.
Although visas are difficult for many Russians to obtain, cars still stop at the border fence at three in the morning, let someone out and return.
But most of them come by bus, and many stay seated until Tallinn.
Since the actual end of air traffic, Narva has been one of the last bridgeheads to Putin's Russia.
For years, Narva has been considered the »most Russian city in the EU«.
96 percent of the people here grow up with Russian as their mother tongue.
For a long time, the industrial city fought against emigration and a bad image.
The ethnic Estonians saw the city as a Soviet legacy, as an embarrassing legacy of their own history of oppression.
Recently, however, things seemed to be going uphill.
The only yellow and blue posters belong to Lidl
Now many are wondering whether the city will soon become Europe's blind spot - or perhaps the next target of Russian fantasies of conquest.
Conversely, quite a few Russians have feared the wrath of the Estonian majority since the war.
There are no Ukrainian flags anywhere, the only yellow and blue posters belong to the newly opened Lidl.
About 700 meters from the border crossing, there is still a lot of activity in the »Inger Hotel« even at night.
Since last week, the staff in the prefabricated building clad in gray sheet metal have had no problems occupying all 66 rooms at all times.
The receptionist estimates that she currently has to turn away around 30 to 35 people per night.
They come straight from the border and are looking for accommodation until the first bus leaves in the morning.
First Ukrainians came from Russia, then Western Europeans and US citizens who had not gotten a flight.
Everyone wanted to leave these days.
Far from Russia.
She herself is Russian, says the receptionist.
She only came to Narva to study a year ago.
You don't have to ask long how she finds the new full employment.
"I'd rather be unemployed," says the young woman.
The war has already destroyed much more than just Ukraine.
Her own father is completely convinced that Putin is right.
At the same time, she experienced how old friends were arrested after protests in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Acquaintances from the Ukraine have not been available for days.
While she is talking about the effects of the war in a country 800 kilometers away, she has to interrupt twice.
After an older couple with plastic bags come young parents with backpacks and small children in their arms.
They ask for a hostel in Russian.
Both of them have to be rejected.
The last bed was already reserved at noon, says the receptionist.
The guests forgo a conversation and disappear into the night.
It's minus 11 degrees outside.
The next morning, new guests are at the door.
The rumor that Russia could soon introduce martial law has brought even more people to the border.
Many who had a 90-day holiday visa leave right after work on Friday.
It is the farewell of the big city dwellers that can be experienced here.
There is the journalist from Saint Petersburg, who fled with his girlfriend and is now in the hotel doubting whether he can really leave his sick mother-in-law behind.
The Montessori teacher from Moscow who missed her flight.
The two young engineers, Natalia, 30, and Aleksander, 35, who have been worried all week whether their visa start will still be enough to flee.
How will it go now?
"We don't have any plans as to what's going to happen next," she says.
"I don't want to go to war," he says in a trembling voice.
And Russia?
“Even less than a future can I imagine Putin falling.
The propaganda is far too perfect.
It's only going to get worse.' It's like 'Germany 45'.
They put on masks and hats for the photo.
"Forgive me, but we're a bit paranoid these days."
Lenin is standing in the inner courtyard and is pointing lonely to Russia
In the museum in the Narva fortress, too, people think about what the future might look like.
Like almost everything in Narva, it is right on the EU's external border.
A discarded statue of Lenin stands in the inner courtyard, pointing lonely to Russia.
From the battlement you can see the trucks piling up on the other side in Ivangorod.
There are hardly any pedestrians.
There is also a castle over there that nobody seems to want to visit.
The Russian flag flaps almost defiantly in the wind.
The museum staff on the Estonian side speaks Russian and thinks European.
"We don't worry about whether NATO is needed here," says Natalja Vovdenko, who, like her colleagues, also has family on the other side.
'Of course it does.' The British soldiers stationed in Estonia reminded her more of Boy Scouts than warriors.
They're friends.
Vovdenko is shocked by what is happening in Ukraine.
In recent years, concerts have been held in the fortress, including with Russian musicians.
Once, she says, a bass player played on the wall, complemented by a saxophone player on the other side.
It's hard to imagine that something like this will happen again in the years to come.
At least her 92-year-old grandmother understood that the reports on Russian television were false, she says proudly.
"She lived through the Second World War, you can't fool her."
In other age groups, this certainty seems less given.
As in other countries, the Russian state radio can no longer be received in Estonia.
False reports are now circulating that the Estonian government wants to revoke residence permits for Russians.
The mayor of Narva, the first Estonian to hold this post, has already contradicted her on Facebook.
But does such news reach its audience at all?
Natalja Vovdenko says that she no longer knows how secure the peace in the Baltic States is.
Everything blurs.
When a test alarm was recently announced on the Russian side, she jumped at every siren.
She kept asking herself: What if the emergency really starts here?
Would NATO risk nuclear war for us?
Katri Raik knows that a world is collapsing for many citizens these days.
She is the Estonian mayor who made it to the top of the Russian city.
Raik asks you to go for a walk so that you can explain where they are.
Finally, on the river promenade that the EU renovated for them here, they try to find common ground.
Of course, the situation is likely to hit Narva hard, just like other Baltic cities.
In the foreseeable future, the chemical industry will probably run out of material.
Bottlenecks are already being reported in metal processing companies.
The state must help Narva get through this time, says Raik.
And yet a lot has already happened.
Raik is a political professional.
The eyes behind her distinctive red glasses constantly check how what is said is received.
In her previous life she was first a teacher, then the founding director of the only university in Narva.
She later became the Estonian Minister of Interior until she returned again.
On the side, she still writes children's and homeland books.
In Russian and Estonian.
She also speaks German.
"At the moment, only presence helps against the rumors circulating," she is convinced.
This is another reason why she is undaunted.
After all, there is still no pro-Russian party.
In order to allay the suspicions, the Minister of Justice from Tallinn is to drop by next week.
At least the bourgeois government is hitting the right note, says the social democrat.
Natalja Vovdenko from the museum also thinks that persuasion helps.
"We Russians," she says, "often feel like unloved children in Estonia."
But not everyone thinks that way.
Marina, a Russian living in Estonia and mother of two children, stands behind the border on Saturday evening after her return from Russia and complains about Western media.
She complains about alleged censorship.
"Do you know that Zelenskyy is working on the atomic bomb?"
The fact that the war is described as a military operation is nonsense.
Of course she is against the war, she says.
Only to add with a murmur: "In Europe and Russia, after all, nobody benefits from it." On the other hand, she says, there's nothing wrong with conscription: "We all have our obligations." As she speaks, other young Russians come up behind her the border.
She explains the way to the train station.
The number of arrivals increases by several hundred every day
The city reports that the number of people arriving has increased by several hundred every day.
Bus companies have doubled their offer within a week.
Mayor Raik promises that everyone will be admitted.
For Ukrainian nurses and doctors you have a job immediately, she says.
As long as it remains possible in Russia, the number of people leaving the country should continue to grow.
The border police have already doubled their controls and officers.
At the same time, tensions are also rising in Narva.
A pro-Russian politician recently called for the city council to change the city's blue and yellow colors.
The war may not yet be a world war.
It has long been a war that is changing the entire post-Soviet world – a war of nerves.