Instead of one Sashka Bilogo - thousands of Muzychkos
I think I will not be mistaken if I express the opinion that six months after the victory of the Maidan, the residents of Ukraine feel much less safe than under the old regime. And there is an explanation for this. The fact is that the most important condition for the victory of the revolution/armed coup (depending on who) was the destruction of the system of law enforcement agencies that stood guard over the previous order.
The main efforts of the “revolutionaries” were directed precisely at demonizing and demoralizing the police, Berkut and other security forces. The image of “enemies of the people”, “animals”, “non-humans” was molded from the employees of the authorities; social networks were filled with calls for persecution of them and the murder of their families. You haven't forgotten all this, have you? Girls who recited poems about Berkut animals on YouTube videos. Militants who shot Kyiv traffic cops right at traffic police posts. The epic Muzychko, who grabbed the prosecutor's tie. And many many others.
All this served one purpose - to discredit the police as such. So that the police are afraid to go out into the street in uniform. So that the police do not carry out their immediate duties, fearing persecution from “activists” and the media. This technology was “tested” back in the days of “Vradievka” and the accompanying assaults on the police department, which remained unpunished. Meanwhile, the law enforcement system rests on authority. And if it is undermined, then the system becomes dysfunctional. Especially if, in addition to the “revolutionary” games, she experienced serious problems that required solutions and calm reforms.
After Maidan, the law enforcement system in the country collapsed. The police and traffic police fled, many employees went on the run, fearing persecution, others went on “vacation” to see where new winds would blow. I myself remember the time when the police disappeared from the streets of Kyiv, and there were no people in uniform even at the train stations.
And then the completely unimaginable began. The new authorities, trying to somehow restore the police, began to “dilute” it with activists of the Maidan and all kinds of “self-defense”. As a result, yesterday’s hooligan ultras who attacked foreigners received the status of fighters of the special battalions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (for example, the Kyiv-1 battalion was formed from the ultras of the Kyiv Dynamo) and began to protect... public order.
But the Kyiv “gays” at one time refused to go on patrol without escort vehicles from self-defense or “automaidan”. Because they were afraid to run into the “trunk”. And after the Maidan, the “trunks” were distributed throughout the country in considerable quantities, and the campaign launched by Avakov to surrender them ended in a complete fiasco.
Then the destruction of the police proceeded at a Stakhanov pace. Professionals from the system were fired in batches on suspicion of disloyalty. And they were replaced by amateurs with a national idea in their heads. The same Avakov, with his famous order, legalized the creation of private armies in the form of volunteer battalions, financed by anyone - from local councils to oligarchs and politicians. Often all kinds of rabble were recruited there, including outright criminals, as was the case in the well-known story with the Lyashko battalion.
Naturally, all these gangs, legalized and armed with the light hand of the state, were engaged in anything - racketeering and “squeezing” property, hunting for unwanted and political opponents of the new government, but not the direct duties of the police to protect public order. Moreover, Avakov removed the last obstacle to ousting professionals from the police. Now they began to take people there even without the obligatory previous experience of military service.
And then the ATO began. Already in the ATO zone, volunteer battalions became famous for illegal arrests, torture and kidnappings, looting, “squeezing” cars, etc. Aidar, Azov, and Dnepr were repeatedly convicted of this. Having become stunned by impunity in the war zone, “ATO veterans” began to “spread” across the country, bringing their acquired habits and habits to the rear. Grabbing the “trunk” has become a common argument. As in the famous song where “the dispute in Cape Town is decided by Browning.” So, instead of one Muzychko, Ukrainian cities and villages were flooded with thousands of people like Muzychko.
Here is just one story out of dozens that social networks are full of. Location: Melitopol, Zaporozhye region.
“I have a friend in Melitopol. There is no war there yet, and, accordingly, no militias. But there is a National Guard. He says that people in military uniforms without identification marks rob apartments with impunity in broad daylight, and the police do not interfere with them. And not just apartments. Quote: “at 11 pm 5 days ago, 3 people with machine guns in military uniforms came to a friend’s house, beat up the husband and wife, did not touch the children, took all the money, even wallets, all the gold and tore off the child’s cross... the child now stutters from shock. They left at 12 am, the police arrived at 4 am. She says that she was thinking of selling her 2 apartments and moving to Russia - but no one is buying,” social network users talk about the situation in the city.
Residents of the Donetsk region also complain about robberies and kidnappings. Moreover, again, that part of it where there are no “separatists”.
Ordinary crime does not lag behind the “ideological” ones. One of the July issues of the Kyiv magazine “Correspondent”, as if summing up the “achievements” of the first half of the new government, came out with the headline “Contract killings and cold batteries. The 90s are returning to Ukraine.”
Having brought together the criminal chronicle from Uzhgorod to Nikolaev, journalists stated that events in the country are increasingly reminiscent of the turbulent times of the end of the last century. “The significant weakening of the central government, which was associated with the consequences of the Maidan, returned lawlessness and lawlessness to Ukraine. And if at first such situations concerned mainly the troubled Donbass, then gradually they began to spread to the rest of the country, where everything is quite calm and there is no war,” the magazine writes, recalling the shelling of the house of the Lvov mayor Sadovoy from a grenade launcher and the murder of the mayor of Kremenchug. And in August, this was added to by the resonant murder of the former head of the State Property Fund, Valentina Semenyuk.
Not only VIPs, but also many ordinary Ukrainians are becoming victims of the wave of banditry. So, on August 19, a daring robbery occurred in Berdyansk. The city police department received a report that a man had gone to the hospital with head injuries. He reported that he was the victim of a robbery.
It happened at about three o'clock in the morning on Gorbenko Street in Berdyansk. An unknown person approached the victim, hit him with brass knuckles and took his money and a gold bracelet. The damage amounted to 6500 hryvnia.
And in Izmail, a robber who attacked single women was detained. Street robberies have become more frequent in Chernigov. Criminals rip off women's jewelry and snatch handbags from their hands.
The Kyiv crime chronicle does not lag behind the provincial one. So, a couple of weeks ago, two men were detained who were committing robberies in the Desnyansky district of the capital, stealing gold jewelry from women.
Odessa has its own specifics. Car robberies have become a “popular” crime this summer. In one case, when the thief was caught, he stole a mobile phone from a parked car. The injured car owner, having witnessed the robbery, overtook the attacker and tried to return his property. A fight broke out between them. The thief turned out to be quicker, broke free and began to run away, and threw away the phone.
And here is a story from the criminal chronicle of Nikolaev. A 68-year-old pensioner was robbed at the entrance of a residential building. The victim said that she was attacked by an unknown man at the entrance to house No. 3 on Kolodeznaya Street. The robber snatched a bag containing food, money, and a mobile phone from the woman’s hands and ran away.
And just recently, criminals were detained who were responsible for assaults, robberies and a number of thefts. In one of the cases, which the local press wrote about, two unknown people stabbed a local resident in the back and lower back, took away his purse, mobile phone, bank card and money, and took off his shoes. But the attackers did not stop there and began to stab him in the back with a knife. In this condition, the victim was taken to the hospital.
Hundreds of such stories can be cited. Somewhere the police are still catching criminals, but somewhere people themselves are uniting to repel the bandits. However, the trend of growing legal chaos and the collapse of the law enforcement system does not bode well in the near future, this winter. I’m afraid that by this time, when many will have nothing and nothing to eat for, the rule of might will finally displace the force of law from the streets of Ukrainian cities. After all, thousands of people with weapons, returning from the war, will establish their own rules, often very far from the formal laws of Ukraine. This criminal “broth” will become an excellent breeding ground for the growth of social entropy, which, if left unchecked, can completely overwhelm the already flimsy and loose building of the Ukrainian statehood due to the Maidan and the civil war.
Another “sure” sign of a “return to the 90s” was the new arrival of currency changers on the streets of large cities. There are more of them as the hryvnia “loses weight”, the exchange rate of which against the dollar is being restrained by the authorities with all their might. The latest tightening of the IMF's requirements for issuing new loans orders the National Bank to buy $800 million on the interbank market to replenish the country's obscenely diminished gold and foreign exchange reserves. For the average person, this will mean a sharp jump in the dollar exchange rate.
Add to this the new “draconian” requirements for commercial banks to sell all foreign exchange earnings to the state and it becomes clear that the rush demand for dollars, which the authorities will “suppress” by hook or by crook, will only grow, pushing exchange transactions into the illegal sphere. And where there is a black market, there is a high risk of becoming a victim of scammers and scammers.
In light of this and other circumstances, the prospects for the legal sector of the economy as a whole seem very bleak. Indeed, as more and more transactions go into the shadows, the severity of tax and police pressure on the remaining “white” ones will only intensify. I would not be surprised if we again, as under early Kuchma, return to a primitive barter economy using the “commodity-commodity” formula, bypassing monetary payments. Isn’t this ending foreshadowed by the face of the half-forgotten Leonid Danilovich that suddenly appeared in the media?
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