Residents of a small village called Chushka live between two seas – the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Once this place was a paradise with beautiful nature and all kinds of fish swimming in warm water. Thousands of people from all parts of the country would come here for vacation…

But as the time went by, the situation got worse. After the country broke into pieces, people found themselves in a frontier zone where later a new cargo port was built. However, the point of no return was six years ago when they built a chemical terminal. A lot of villagers had to move to other places, but not all of them did. Now about thirty people live in the village which according to the documents no longer exists.

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The shoreline is still pleasing to the eye, but very dirty.

Just a year ago, strangers were not admitted to the village. The point is that the owner of the transfer point installed an unauthorized barrier and the guards did not let anybody in but the residents of the village or their relatives and friends.

They didn’t want any information about the village to come to light and did everything to prevent it. However, the residents of the village made a video and posted it on the Internet. After that the barrier disappeared.

In 2007, there was a storm which caused an oil spill in Kerch Strait. Hundreds of people came here to clean up the shore, so did the villagers – it was their land.

Most of the people do not want to leave at all.

Aleksandr, the owner of the swine, is probably the only one who wants… but noone offers him to.

This boy’s name is Pasha. He says that he likes it here. The only problem is that there are no kids of his age in the village, so he’s got noone to play with. So, now his friends are animals.

It seems that these people do not notice abandoned homes, equipment… They’re just used to it.

A distiller?

The majority of the homes looks like this. Cancer and asthma are very widespread here.

There is one advantage of living here though – it’s warm and you can take a shower outside.

They’ve written a letter of complaint to some officials and are going to send it from another place, the city of Kerch, because letters sent from here are usually intercepted.

In this letter thay complain about the polluted air which contains ammonia and other dangerous things.

Residents of the village who lived close to the hazardous industry, have been moved to new places. Since the number of new apartments was limited, others were offered money, 30 thousand dollars each. But the people had to decline the offer because it’s impossible to buy a new home for this little money.

That’s why they decided to build new homes in a nearby village. But as it often happens, they should have finished the construction half a year ago but they never did…

The chemical terminal. The reservoirs became rusty so it’s not surprising that they pollute the environment.

By the way, Pasha is six too, just like the terminal.

This is his father.

Anchovy.

The fish that they catch, is brought to Ilyich Village, from where it is transported into other villages. Civilization…

In Ilyich there is a kindergarten and a school. There is nothing in Chushka.

A monument to Lenin.

These are the houses where they should have moved the residents of Chushka 6 months ago to.

This donkey is Pasha’s favourite. He also likes to be friends with dogs. But most of all, he likes people.

Location: Chushka

via macos