Polish-Russian Border Life: Residents’ Experiences & Fears

This 60-year-old from Braniewo is a colorful character. Before becoming a sailor and boatswain, he served in the French Foreign Legion and traveled around the world with it. When Russia started the war, he got into a car and went to Ukraine to help in February 2022. He was on the fronts near Kiev and Donbas many times.

— I won’t go to Kaliningrad anymore. I wouldn’t come back. They would rip my legs off.

Once, not so long ago, he swam there through the Vistula Lagoon. Back then it was still possible, all you had to do was fill out a few papers. And the Russians sailed from Królewiec to its port in Pasłęka. They had fun together, feasted and brought each other gifts.

— The relationships were more than familial.

Sailors from the region preferred to sail on the Polish side of the Vistula Lagoon. Why? To explain this, Doda gives me a quick lecture on the history of World War II, and she, like many other things, has a clear passion for it. Well, in early 1945, the advancing Soviets cut off East Prussia from the rest of the Reich, locking soldiers and civilians in a large bag. The Germans, terrified by the atrocities of the Red Army, started to escape through the frozen reservoir to the Vistula Spit. The thin March ice broke under carts, sleighs and trucks. Thousands of people drowned and the shallow waters became a graveyard of wrecks. After the war, the Poles cleared their part of the reservoir, the Russians, not so much. Until now, sailing on their side outside the designated route carries the risk of getting your boat caught in sunken German vehicles. On weekends, Russian yachts came to Polish waters.

– Very good sailors – recalls Ryszard Doda, full of appreciation for his neighbors.

Leaning back in a chair in his boatswain’s office, he gesticulates lively with an unlit cigarette in his hand.

— At first, when they started arriving, it was on just anything. Then they noticed us and started changing boats. They bought new ones in the West and pushed their old ones deep into Russia. It took a lot of effort to get a meter of water away from them during the regatta.

Until recently, sports competition on the Zalew was something normal. The most famous item in the sailing calendar were the regattas organized jointly by the marshals of the Warmian-Masurian and Pomeranian Voivodeships and the governor of the Kaliningrad Oblast. In Poland it is known as the Three Marshals’ Cup Regatta, in Russia it is known as the Three Governors’ Cup. The racing boats crossed the Lagoon back and forth. It even happened that they sailed honorably along the Pregoła River to Kaliningrad itself. – Three days of hard work – Ryszard Doda recalls the regatta.

Toil on the water and toil after disembarkation. Both sides went out of their way to accommodate each other. The Russians held their first event in the ruins of a German fort on the Vistula Spit, which they know as “Kosa”. The Poles wondered what their hosts were planning as they led them into the middle of nowhere through grass taller than an adult man. At the end, there was a mown clearing, tents, an orchestra and waiters in white gloves waiting for them. And in the tents there were tables full of vodka, sprinkled with nuts and canned fish. In the following years, post-race events moved to the best restaurants in Królewiec.

— My friends encouraged me many times to sail there with them, says one of the sailors I meet in Nowa Pasłęka. – You thought it would always be possible and put it off. Well, now I don’t think I’ll be able to swim quickly.

After the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine, traffic across the Lagoon stopped. The Three Marshals Regatta became the Two Marshals Regatta – exclusively Polish ones. Russians stopped coming to the marina in Pasłęka for the weekend.

– Firstly, they don’t get visas, secondly, it would probably not be welcomed from the other side, thirdly, the propaganda did its job – I hear.

Only Polish yachts line the river.

At the bridge connecting Nowa and Stara Pasłęka there are plaques stating that the historical border of Prussia and Warmia ran here. If such details had been taken care of after the war, the border between Poland and the USSR could have been built on this river, and Ryszard Doda, half a century later, would not have been able to establish his marina on the northern bank. This is where applying a ruler to the map turned out to be beneficial for Poles.

The border runs about three kilometers beyond the port.

The last beach in Schengen

I get on my bike and go to see its beginning.

– And do you have your ID with you? They will definitely control you. Our guys are keeping a tight watch now, I hear in the village.

Indeed, when I am driving along an embankment between wet fields, I can see a Border Guard off-road vehicle heading towards me from a distance. Detention, documents, questions: where and why.

– To the last beach in Poland – I answer.

“The last beach in Schengen,” the young officer corrects me.

Both he and his friend are polite, businesslike and probably a little tired of serving on a tightly wired border where – everyone in the area agrees – there is peace. But border guards do not allow themselves to be drawn into conversation, even if they want to. Questions for the spokesman, of course. I hear three times that, by order of the voivode, it is forbidden to enter the 15-meter border strip and that under no circumstances should you take photos of the other side. And the Guard has its own ways of finding out that someone took such photos.

If properly instructed, I can continue driving on concrete slabs. When the embankment ends, a narrow path branches off to the left. It leads between the reeds and is muddy and wet. It would be impossible to cross it on foot without high rubber boots. I accelerate the bike, splatter myself with mud and ride out of the reeds into an open space. The last beach in Schengen is small, quiet and wild. There are no traces of outdoor events on the ground, which are customary in such places. There is only one plastic canister lying in the grass on the side.

The strip of light sand stretches to the end of Poland, that is, to the coils of barbed wire that cross the beach and, just in case, are placed in the water. There is no beach on the other side. In Russia, the bushes reach right to the shore. Behind them, in the distance, you can see a white spot on the Vistula Spit. This must be the former Prussian Piława, a fortress guarding the strait connecting the Lagoon with the open sea. Today, Piława is Baltiysk, a military center and base of the Russian Baltic Fleet. And at the same time, the westernmost city in the entire Federation.

The Polish-Russian border on the bank of the Vistula LagoonMarcin Slippers / Onet

I’m going back to Nowa Pasłęka. Joanna, a well-informed saleswoman at a local store, told me about the way to the wild beach. She wanted me to come back to her and report back whether I managed to get there. So I stand in the store with muddy pants and say that I have found the last beach in Poland. Or maybe rather the first one. I’m lost in this. Joanna has a clear opinion on this.

— A journalist once came to me and asked what it was like to live at the end of the world. I say: hola hola sir, at the beginning. We live not at the end, but at the beginning of the world, he says.

So what’s it like to live there?

– Life is normal. I’m not afraid of Russians. Absolutely. They don’t exist at all.