- Daylight kidnappings, killings and robberies
- Serious crime was up 90% in 2014
- The cause is weak central authority that has forsaken a monopoly on force
- People are sick of it - but it’s unclear what they can do
A girl was abducted last month by an unknown person on
Independence [Maidan] Square in Kyiv on a Sunday evening. This was reported on
the traffic police website:
“Kiev. Girl kidnapped, Independence Square. A girl was
forced into a car, which fled in the direction of a pedestrian zone.
06/14/2015, 21:40. BMW 5 Series, AK6068CI, dark color. Information of the Kiev
State Automobile Inspectorate.”
On the same day, a 16-year-old girl was kidnapped in the
Ivano-Frankivsk Region, as reported by the press service of the regional
administration of the Interior Ministry:
“On June 14, around 1:30 am on the road between the
villages of Rosokhach and Vinograd in Gorodenkovskii district, an unknown
person forced a girl into a VAZ (Lada) car and drove off in an unknown
direction. Her current whereabouts are unknown.”
Earlier, in the Donetsk Region, in Slavyansk, occupied
by Ukrainian troops, a local resident told the police that her son had been
abducted. This was the report by a law enforcement source:
“The woman went to the Slavyansk police on June 10 and
stated that a group of people had grabbed her 20 year old son in the street.
According to the woman, her son was taken to an unknown destination.”
On June 12 (line 102 of the police report), an
operations duty officer was informed that near the Troeschina Market in Kiev,
an unknown person held a man in a car, demanding money. When law officers arrived
on the scene, they saw a young man lying on the ground with no signs of life.
Doctors pronounced him dead.
On June 1, eight year old Nastya Bobkova was abducted in
her yard in Zaporozhye. On June 13, she was found dead on the island of
Khortytsya in a forest plantation, near a training base belonging to
Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
In social networks were reports of a search for missing
student Jana Dmitrikova of the Zaporozhye Aviation College. The girl was
returning home from work late at night on June 13 but never made it home.
Sixteen year old Susanna Sharkova, who had been missing,
was found murdered in a private home in the Shevchenko district of Zaporozhye
on March 11.
June 8, an unknown person driving a black Mercedes
kidnapped a girl in Kostelni Street in Kiev. This was reported by the Ukrainian
Ministry of the Interior.
On May 19, according to the aforementioned site, a girl
was kidnapped in the Obolonskiy District of Kiev by an unknown person driving
a Mercedes.
All of these messages resemble reports from the front
lines of war. Serious crimes occur almost every day in Ukraine, most of which
remain unsolved. Kidnappings in broad daylight, vehicle hijackings, robberies ‒
all of this has become commonplace in the country that won the “revolution of dignity”
on Maidan Square.
In 2014, Ukraine registered more than one million
criminal offenses, a nearly 90% increase in the number of serious crimes–most
of them in the capital city of Kyiv.
The number of robberies since the beginning of this year
is twice that of the same period of 2014. Almost all involved weapons. In the
view of the president of the Ukrainian Federation of Security Professionals,
Sergei Shabovta, the cause of this sharp increase in the number of armed
assaults is a drastic rise in social tension and a large number of
illegal firearms.
“In the first quarter of this year alone,” said
Shabovta, “the number of crimes of violence involving the use of weapons has
more than tripled. This statistic is, unfortunately, sometimes hidden from the
public by the law enforcement system.”
The expert explained that in Ukraine, there has been an
increase in the number of people suffering depression.
Many of those have been
left homeless and destitute. In addition, Shabovta noted a significant increase
in illegal arms trafficking. There is information that Kiev is experiencing
sharp increases in trafficked weapons from the so-called ATO zone (referring to
the ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ of the Ukraine government against
Russian-language fighters in eastern Ukraine).
As reported by ‘Aydar’ battalion Chief of Staff Valentin
Likholit to the correspondent of the Ukrainian edition of Vesti, weapons
from the war zone are entering Kyiv both for sale and as backups
for emergencies.
“It works like this: thugs associate themselves with
brokers, who then organize the delivery,” he said.
Most buyers want to buy Makarov (PM) and Tokarev (TT)
combat pistols and cartridges, and grenades. Sellers offer “to obtain any
weapons”, showing the items in photos. In today’s Ukraine, guns are easy to
order for home delivery, even via social networks.
Incidentally, many mass media outlets already compare
Ukraine with Dudayev’s Chechnya. We all know what happened to the
nearly-forgotten ‘Ichkeria’.[1]
Most of the population became tired of thuggish
lawlessness and supported an anti-terrorist operation by Russian troops and a
return to the legal domain of the Republic of Russia.
According to analyst Vasily Muravitskiy, the main
reason behind the worsening of the criminal situation in Ukraine is the
destruction of the continuity of power.
“The situation is such that the power in the country is
lying in the dust. In the minds of thousands of people, there is the impression
that they can just pick it up and use it. The government has given up the most
important responsibility of power: it has ceded the right to use force to
self-organized, semi-bandit battalions, some of which, like ‘Azov’ and ‘Aydar’,
are recognized even abroad as fascist bandits.
“The state is unable to stop this because what remains
of the state apparatus is directly involved in the mayhem.
Take, for example,
the appearance of a right-radical extremist organization at the building of the
press-secretary of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. He had come to support
the chief of the SBU, Valentin Nalyvaychenko, who was summoned
for questioning.
“Consider the pictures of burning oil depots, where
lunches for the fire brigades were brought by volunteers instead of
the state.
“The ‘Maidan’ government has launched a mechanism for
the collapse of the state at the highest government level. Therefore, the
‘Ichkerization’ of Ukraine will continue. But the main problem is not even
Ichkerization but, rather, the fact that in Ukraine today, there is not a single
real force that could, or would want to, oppose the banditization of the
country and its transformation into a free-for-all.”
Political analyst Victor Shapinov also
believes that Ichkerization of Ukraine has already taken place.
“Speaking of the lawlessness of armed men, a substitute
for the state, it has already happened. And it all started right on the
‘Maidan’, where the nationalists seized the House of Trade Unions and the
Ukrainian House [convention center] and the first thing they did was to create
makeshift prisons and torture chambers.
“Even the ‘post-Maidan’ rule, which relies heavily on
the terror of paramilitary groups, had to struggle with extreme manifestations
of Ichkerization. Let us recall the elimination of one of the extremist leaders,
Muzychko.[2] The process goes on.
“A recent example was the robbing of a gas station by
ATO veterans who killed two police officers as they attempted to arrest
them.[3] This is a case where employees of law enforcement agencies at least
tried to stop the lawlessness of the “national heroes”. But how many cases
might there be when the police were afraid to intervene?”
Svobodnaya Pressa (SP): Can we say that the
state is neglecting its responsibility to protect civilians?
“This state did not declare this goal. It is not
responsible to the citizens. But it is always ready to answer to their sponsors
in the West. Some people have openly said: ‘If you are dissatisfied with
something, you are agents of a foreign enemy.’ I’m not exaggerating. See
statements by officials in Kiev. Look at the central television channels to see
for yourself.”
SP: Will we come to the point that the majority
of Ukrainians, like most residents of Chechnya at the beginning of the 2000s,
will welcome troops who can put an end to the lawlessness?
“I think the picture is more complex than that. But
before the militia of Donbass is greeted with flowers in the cities of central
Ukraine, the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People’s Republic
(DPR) must set an example by successfully building up a welfare state against
the backdrop of a Ukraine plunging into the abyss. Of course, some progress has
been made in this respect. For example, the nationalization of a number of
important enterprises in the breakaway republics.
“But for now, there is still a question whether
state-building will continue in Donbas. After all, there are the Minsk
agreements stipulating that the LPR and DPR must return to Ukrainian
jurisdiction. Meanwhile, to restore order in the country, there must be a clear-cut
alternative to official Kiev. And not only a military alternative but also a
political and ideological one.”
Ukrainian historian Vladimir Kornilov, director of
the Center for Eurasian Studies, recalls that most armed crimes committed in
Ukraine are now perpetrated by punitive forces that have been at the front. “As
a result of the massacre unleashed a year ago by Kiev, arms are spreading
around the country uncontrolled. Gangs formed under the guise of “volunteer
battalions” (note, even the Prosecutor General of Ukraine has recognized that
‘Aydar’ is a gang) are now completely unchecked. And it would have been strange
if all this had not led to a sharp increase in crime. The exponential growth in
crime was birthed by ‘Maidan’ itself.”
SP: Why can’t the authorities do anything?
“What can we expect from the authorities, born with the
aid of gangster methods? This government understands that without war, it would
be swept away. All its efforts are aimed solely at trying to contain its gangs
in Donbas, where criminals with weapons in their hands can do all sorts of
crimes, while not allowing them to rampage too much in the rest
of Ukraine.
“But even Kiev understands that these efforts are
fruitless. Looters returning from the front cannot live and earn by any other
means. The Kiev government consists of minions who live by the principle of the
French proverb: ‘After us – the deluge’.”
SP: What is the likelihood of obtaining the
consent of citizens for whatever power that can deliver them from
the mayhem?
“The kind of chaos and lawlessness that now reigns in
Ukraine always generates a desire among citizens for a ‘strong hand’ [to
control it]. The political slant of this ‘hand’ usually does not worry the
populace very much…”
Translator’s notes:
[1] Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudayev was the first president
of the ‘Chechen Republic of Ichkeria’ from 1991 until his death in 1996. He was
killed by Russian armed forces.
[2] Aleksandr Muzychko was shot and killed by Ukrainian police in March 2014.
[3] Two police officers were killed and three others were hospitalized by automatic gunfire in the early hours of Sunday, May 3 as they gave chase to two gunmen who had robbed a gas station. The gunmen and their accomplices were members of several neo-Nazi battalions, including ‘Aidar’ and ‘Azov’. Among the accomplices later arrested was 19 year old Vera Zaverukha.
[2] Aleksandr Muzychko was shot and killed by Ukrainian police in March 2014.
[3] Two police officers were killed and three others were hospitalized by automatic gunfire in the early hours of Sunday, May 3 as they gave chase to two gunmen who had robbed a gas station. The gunmen and their accomplices were members of several neo-Nazi battalions, including ‘Aidar’ and ‘Azov’. Among the accomplices later arrested was 19 year old Vera Zaverukha.
Translation to English by Don
Hank for CounterPunch.
Source: Russia Insider 31-07-2015
