The Ukrainian and the Russian checkpoints are at a distance of 3 kilometres from each other. Between the checkpoints, there is a dry southern steppe: warm winds, salt soils, birds and southernwood. The bus goes from the last custom control to the heart of the peninsula. The roads are framed with pro-Russian symbolics pined all around the windscreen. The politically committed news on the radio is blended with music: 

«Let’s come together - right now - in sweet harmony»

«The Russian Academy of Science had been measuring Crimea's tectonic movement: the peninsula is moving towards Russia»

«Sounds epic, have you heard that?» - the unseen fellow traveller initiates the low-voiced conversation: «Those billboards with portraits of Putin and his quotations are all along the roads… I can’t even read at such speed. I have a feeling that everything is temporal here. The ancient ruins in Crimea used to be great too. One of the drivers I’ve met here, an old Crimean Tatar - calm and blessed - said that the end of the world is close. I’m here to visit my friends. They have a house, a garden, and three dogs. They are going to sell the house and leave, it's unbearable anymore. They catch toothfish in the Antarctic and small tuna as it comes from the Mediterranean. They say: when you are slow to recharge your gun underwater, the fish gather around you and stare at what you are doing…»

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Crimea, 2016