Entry into Ukraine

January 15, 2024 

Entry into Ukraine

First day back in Ukraine I am reminded of the kindness and deference afforded to western volunteers.  The bureaucratic maze is confounding, but a tentative smile and a moderate effort at Ukrainian will eventually get you the right stamp and a nod.  This process is nearly always accompanied by several people participating in the dispensation of advice, all of whom will inevitably disagree about the answer. 

A policeman in Lviv stops us by holding up the official UA police “stop” placard, a large, red, reflective lollipop, which makes it difficult to take him seriously. He demands a drivers license and magnanimously accepts our Washington State issued DL card as adequate.  A second policeman, 300 miles eastward near Zhytomir, dubiously looks at the same drivers license and shakes his head grimly.  No, no…that no work in Ukraine.  You must Ukraine license. Makes an international grimace for “I’m going to have issue you a ticket now….and begins to open his iPad to record our transgression.  Whether is it our contrition or his realization that this will involve too much paperwork and another language, he relents, gives us a smile and waives us off.

Kostya, our Minister of all Ukrainian Mysteries, tells us he’s never heard of Americans needing a Ukrainian license.  Yes, maybe international, yes, but you can’t get that here.  He consults an actual minister of an actual ministry and that minister, name withheld, knows of no law requiring foreigners to obtain a Ukrainian license.  In the end, it is agreed by everyone concerned that we need to switch our German plates for Ukrainian ones so as to not unnecessarily irritate the local law.  In the meantime, we astutely eschew police presence, to the extent that is possible in a country under martial law.