By William J. Kole, The Associated Press
Uzhhorod, Ukraine, Thursday, April 8, 2004

They're shut behind a new Iron Curtain -- a 3,860-kilometer economic frontier separating the former Soviet Union from the newly expanded EU and the stability and prosperity it represents.

"Sometimes I don't pay the electricity or water bills for months because I don't have enough money," Vasilchenko said bitterly. "I have to come here to sell something in order to have a better life."

That last resort could disappear May 1, when Europe crowns its most significant geopolitical shift since World War II by making EU members of eight former communist countries.

Enlargement brings the EU right to the doorstep of the turbulent Balkans and the former U.S.S.R., raising troubling security issues as the bloc rushes to tighten borders.

The old Iron Curtain was a Cold War border from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean consisting of minefields, attack dogs, tanks, concrete barriers and sharpshooters perched in towers. The new divide is draped with its share of barbed wire, but it's far more high-tech -- computers linked to national and Interpol databases help guards decide who comes and goes.

Both borders, however, share the same goal: to keep the easterners securely in the East.

Already awash in immigrants and rising xenophobia, the EU is determined to avert an onslaught of cheap labor even as it reaches out to court new corners of the continent. The new frontier also threatens to further isolate Russian minorities already floating in limbo.

"Nobody takes us into account. We are an empty spot," said Vera Altonina, 63, an ethnic Russian pensioner selling flowers on the streets of Riga, Latvia's capital, where she lives and works without citizenship.

"During Soviet times, there were no noncitizens and citizens. We were one big country, and nobody cared whether you were Russian or Latvian," she said. "Joining NATO and the EU was not our decision. The government never asked us. Now, we are isolated from Russia completely."

Across the Baltics and in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, border controls are being strengthened, not loosened.

EU headquarters in Brussels has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help the newcomer nations buy aircraft, snowmobiles, night-vision goggles, scanners and computers.

During the Cold War, the Slovak-Ukraine border was under Moscow's sway, and few people had the means or permission to travel.

Today, the border is virtually impenetrable, patrolled by 500 highly trained Slovak guards, meticulously searching Ukrainians and their vehicles and wandering through nearby fields and forests.

"Before, we were in the East. Now we're about to switch to the other side, and we can't take any chances," said Deputy Colonel Miron Vojtasek, Slovakia's second-in-command for the frontier. "We're protecting the outer border of Europe."

The need for tight security became apparent in late March when Ukraine's Defense Ministry disclosed that several hundred Soviet-built missiles were missing from the nation's arsenals, raising concerns that they might reach terrorists.

In the Baltics, where the border with Russia was mostly an administrative one until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, barbed-wire fences now run through thick forests, police boats patrol borderland rivers and lakes and modern customs offices dot the main highways to Russia and Belarus.

The Kremlin is unhappy that the Baltic states, which it long viewed as its own backyard, have joined the EU and NATO. Baltic officials have tried to assure the Russians that everyone in the region will be more secure.

"The western border of Russia has never been so safe before," declared Antanas Valionis, Lithuania's foreign minister.

But there's more to the new Iron Curtain than security issues. The EU expansion cuts off Russia from Kaliningrad, its westernmost exclave, and risks deepening the isolation of the Russian minorities in Latvia and elsewhere.

"When I go to Russia, they tell me I'm not Russian. When I'm in Latvia, they tell me I'm not Latvian," said Slava Vyacheslavs, 63, who left Russia on foot for Latvia at age 4 in 1944 yet has not been granted citizenship.

"I get a measly little pension in Latvia, so I've got to stay here. So let it be Europe -- maybe that will be better for me," he said.