Is Ukraine heading towards a Korean-style demilitarised zone?

It is the strangest place, the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that separates South Korea from North Korea. It is simultaneously a historic battlefield, a sombre graveyard, a tourist honeypot full of coach parties from Seoul, and a Cold War frontier, hotly defended on either side. One minute you are looking at a kiddies’ funfair, or a shop that sells ‘souvenir North Korean money’, the next you are staring at endless barbed wire and monuments to failed North Korean defectors, shot dead as they attempted to cross the two-and-a-half-mile strip of landmines. Which itself has turned into an Edenic eco-haven, full of deer and eagles, as the humans have vanished.

In the middle of Imjingak Resort, the touristy yet militarised focus of most DMZ visits, you can find one of those cute fingerposts that points to various places around the world, the sort of thing you might see at John O’Groats, or indeed in the Korean War sitcom Mash. In the DMZ, this multi-digit signpost points out that London is ‘5,500 miles’ this way, while Vladivostok is ‘460 miles’ that way, and so on.

Missing from the signpost is Kyiv, Lviv or Kharkiv. But they really should be there, because I believe – or fear – Ukraine is heading in the direction of a Korean-style DMZ. A frozen wartime frontier; a tragic armistice that might endure for decades. There are, of course, huge differences between these two conflicts – e.g. Ukraine is largely a war between democracy and autocracy, rather than capitalism vs communism – but there are too many similarities for the parallel to be ignored. To explain why, I must describe my own experiences in Ukraine.

I’ve visited Ukraine twice in the past 18 months and both tours were as compelling as they were challenging.