Apart from having fucking been there, and having photos of such, no. Admittedly, my experiences have been Ukraine/Russia, Belarus/Russia, Kaz/Russia, Latvia/Rus

Apart from having fucking been there, and having photos of such, no. Admittedly, my experiences have been Ukraine/Russia, Belarus/Russia, Kaz/Russia, Latvia/Russia, and in each and every case there's been an exclusion zone. The "farmland" you see is in no-mans land, between security fences, which have mines along their inside faces at a minimum. Re: the link you've posted, that's one of the aforementioned "so inhospitable it doesn't matter" areas. I've been to Aktobe (just down the road from your link), and it's indescribable how butt-fuck nowhere it is. ~£20 for a salad that wouldn't fill a mouse, but £0.02 for a bottle of vodka and a steak. Oh and there's a bowling alley with DDR. Go figure. Nothing grows out there. 52 C in the summer, -30 C in the winter. An over-land trip by foot through that area is death. Here are two photos of that neck of the woods - welcome to check the EXIF. http://imgur.com/kFvjXHy,B16ieLf http://imgur.com/kFvjXHy,B16ieLf The other outstanding feature of Russian borders is the wreckage of failed crossing attempts - there's always the winning combination of burned out cars in fields surrounding any crossing point, along with a cemetery for those who didn't make it across. They take their border security seriously. Getting a gun pointed at you is standard procedure. Again, you're more than welcome to argue with someone who's actually been across Russian land borders, on many occasions, but that's your prerogative entirely.