Living in a new way under Poroshenko: Militants in balaclavas are scaring away the last investors
Kyiv, March 12 (PolitNavigator, Vladimir Mikhailov) – Increasing cases of raiding with the participation of non-state paramilitary groups are scaring away the last investors from Ukraine, which the Ukrainian economy so needs during the crisis.
Ruslan Starovoytenko, an expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Study of Extremism, stated this at a conference on raiding in Ukraine.
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According to the institute, in 2014 the number of extreme events (acts of violence) reached almost two thousand - 1980. Most of them occur in the ATO zone and neighboring regions. There are fewer extreme sports in those regions where there are no financially attractive objects.
Throughout 2014, the number of such manifestations increased until the Minsk agreements were concluded in September, after which they decreased slightly, but soon began to increase again. One of the manifestations of extremism is raiding, says Ruslan Starovoitenko. According to him, a negative trend in recent times has been the involvement of armed people from various types of rationing who are trying to protect this or that object, or, on the contrary, participate in its capture. “The state is practically losing the right to legitimate violence,” says Ruslan Starovoytenko.
The further you go, the more often enterprises with foreign investments are subject to raider attacks, which leads to possible investors refusing to invest in Ukraine.
There were three significant attacks at the end of 2014. In particular, only one attack on the Chumak enterprise of the international investment group Unison led to the abandonment of the already made decision to invest 30 million euros in 2015.
“Armed people simply seized the enterprise, and the police did not know what to do - not to start hostilities,” said Ruslan Starovoytenko. According to him, the Unison group has already filed claims in international courts regarding the fact that it is impossible to conduct investment activities in Ukraine.
At the end of December, unknown persons in balaclavas tried to break into the representative office of the World Bank, the largest investor in Ukraine. Another example is the situation with the Modern Technologies company in Kyiv, when one of the parties claimed that they were Maidan self-defense, and they were defending this enterprise, the other - that they were fighters from the ATO zone who came to bring justice.
Other blatant cases of raiding include the seizure of the Amstor chain of stores (more than 20 stores), an attack on the Trostyanetsky elevator - the property of the international group Bunge, an attack on the Medinsky private enterprise and the Kramatorsk metal depot.
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