The Great Wall of Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine — Pushed against the wall by Russia’s naked aggression, a wounded nation now wants to seal itself off completely from its jingoistic neighbor. Behind the electoral gambit played out at the polls on Sunday, meant to draw a philosophical and political line against the neo-imperialism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, there’s also a construction project.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko announced plans in early September to build an extensive wall—called, well, “The Wall”—on the country’s border with Russia that, theoretically at least, would keep Moscow out and secessionists in. The defenses would include an actual steel wall, in addition to watchtowers, trenches for soldiers, and a barbed no-man’s land running contiguous to the countries’ massive shared border. These miles-long fortifications will include 4,000 army dugouts, tank detachments, and sophisticated surveillance equipment to detect troop movements across the frontier.

Although the thousand-mile-long project (1200 miles to be exact) seems improbable in scope and almost as Quixotic as the Maginot Line, the government already has earmarked funds for the project, and work has begun on the border near the northern city of Kharkiv, away from the conflict zone.

During a high-profie visit to the wall site on October 15, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that the project demonstrates that Ukraine and Russia are “not one nation, as Putin says, and the Kremlin thinks,” an rattled off a list of reasons it is supposed to make sense: stopping illegal immigration, stopping subversive, stopping smuggling, stopping the movement of weapons, stopping the movement of radioactive materials and, last but certainly not least, opening the door wider o the European Union by slamming the door in Russia’s face. “No one will provide us the visa-free regime with the E.U. if there is no border,” he said. Yatsenyuk claimed that the E.U. already has set aside $20 million for the wall construction, and suggested it is important for eventual NATO membership as well.