Analysts fear that vigilantism and violence, like the kind that took place in Mukacheve on July 11, will become more common if authorities don’t do more to stop corruption and punish crimes.
Analysts at the same time remain skeptical that Ukraine’s political leaders will strengthen rule of law and enforce the law effectively, since they or their allies could become targets of criminal investigations under an independent law enforcement system.
Two Right Sector members were killed in a shootout with police over smuggling in the westernmost Zakarpattya Oblast, which borders four European Union nations.
President Petro Poroshenko responded on July 15 by transferring Hennadiy Moskal from his duties as governor of war-torn Luhansk Oblast to Zakarpattya Oblast.
“He’s proven in Luhansk that he can bring order and remove lawlessness and marauding, and he’s demosntrated that he represents true Ukrainian authority that is not corurpt, that is patriotic, and whose main task is to help people,” Poroshenko said, according to Interfax-Ukraine.
Moskal governed Zakarpattya in 2001-2002 and was chief of police in the region in 1995-1997.
According to Viktoriya Podgorna, the director of the Center for Socio-Political Design, the Muchacheve gangland-style fight shows the lack of progress in fighting corruption, smuggling and the stubborn insistence of Ukrainian politicians of clinging to the status quo despite the rhetoric of reform.
The volunteer Right Sector Battalion, which is not part of Ukraine’s military or law enforcement structures, claimed the battle in Mukacheve is part of a wider fight against corruption. In their version, the conflict started when members of the group confronted government officials about involvement in a smuggling ring. The region provides easy access to Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland – meaning billions of dollars in cross-border smuggling of contraband.
Local prosecutors blamed the Right Sector, saying their armed members shot first at police, using grenade launchers and then automatic rifles.
The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, has promised an investigation into the incident, and member of parliament Mykhaylo Lanyo, who the Right Sector implicated in smuggling, has been called in for questioning. Lanyo is a former member of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
The fact that the incident occurred hundreds of kilometers from the war front serves as a fearsome reminder that while Ukraine is battling Russia in the east, it still has to contend with rising anger amid lagging reforms and entrenched fiefdoms of corruption.
Besides Right Sector, there’s plenty of other disgruntled citizens out there.
“Even if Right Sector is disbanded and declared a forbidden paramilitary group, there will be others doing the same thing they did. It will happen in other regions as well, because people want justice and the government hasn’t been giving it to them,” Podgorna said.
Independent lawmaker Borislav Bereza agreed.
Unless the government “takes control of the flow of arms and the situation with contraband and begins to really rid itself of Yanukovych’s legacy, distrust of the authorities will grow into another uprising that neither the government nor Ukraine will survive,” Bereza told the Kyiv Post.
The public’s distrust of the authorities was quite clear in the wake of the Mukacheve battle, with support for Right Sector dominating social media.
While Russian media portrayed Right Sector as monsters and played up the incident as proof that “neo-Nazis” are running Ukraine, many ordinary Ukrainians responded by asking why they should trust a law enforcement system that is rife with corruption and ineffectiveness in punishing crime.
Podgorna said that while Right Sector may not be widely popular, the “overwhelming majority” of citizens would back their calls for rooting out corruption.
Soldiers from other battalions were quicker to condemn the authorities than Right Sector for the shootout.
“The authorities have not lived up to their promises, and they have maxed out all the public’s trust – that’s a fact,” said Maksym, a volunteer with the Donbas Battalion who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
“It seems more likely that Right Sector was set up in this incident. We’ve lost all patience with the authorities and are fed up with their promises,” Maksym said.
Oleksiy, another volunteer with the Donbas Battalion, said he believed the incident in Mukacheve was part of the government’s bid to get rid of volunteer fighters.
“Right Sector was in the trenches from the very beginning, they shouldn’t just be shut out,” Oleksiy said, adding that while some Right Sector members might be up to no good “they shouldn’t all be seen as bad.”
The government has sought to bring all volunteer battalions under either the control of the Defense or Interior Ministry. The Right Sector has been central to those plans, with the Defense Ministry announcing in April that its leader, member of parliament Dmytro Yarosh, would be an adviser to Army General Staff commander.
But the group has still been defiant of the authorities on more than one occasion, and Yarosh, in the aftermath of Mukacheve, said Right Sector had taken matters into their own hands because “the laws of Ukraine don’t work in Mukacheve.”
Yarosh’s lack of faith in the government that he is part of is a common sentiment among soldiers on the front line.
Podgorna said it is not limited to them. “This situation threatens the government even more than the paramilitaries do,” she said.
“The conflict in Mukacheve is a strong signal [of the need] to completely overhaul the entire system, because it doesn’t meet the needs of Ukrainian society,” she said, noting that the government had not yet kept its promises to meet demands made by the public during the EuroMaidan Revolution.
The government has “had a year-and-a-half now, but they’ve made only imitation or cosmetic reforms,” she said.
One of those demands was to remove corrupt officials in power, yet the public continues to see such officials let out on bail or flee the country to evade justice. Just last week, two high-ranking officials in the Prosecutor General’s Office accused of a massive extortion scheme were offered bail, and one of them was released. Days later, a court in Kyiv Oblast acquitted a former university president accused of swindling taxpayers out of millions of hryvnia. The move prompted appeals to Poroshenko to intervene.
“When there’s a war going on and many citizens have arms, then of course this is the response (that the government) will get to injustice,” Podgorna said, adding that the Mukacheve conflict was a result of “clans left over from the post-Soviet system” and Yanukovych era officials being allowed to do as they please.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, during his visit to Washington, D.C., on July 13, said the Mukacheve fight was about “corruption and smuggling” and not the Right Sector. Podgorna said his comments were “populist politics” seekign to appease the public rather than make any real change.
Political analyst Taras Berezovets of Berta Communications said the conflict in Mukacheve could have been avoided if the authorities had removed certain officials from power in 2014. “What happened there is a very dangerous indicator for the authorities,” he said. “That this shootout could just happen [shows there] was a loss of control by the local police and governor. It’s bad news for the government.
“I don’t think there will be a third Maidan [revolution], but if there is, they aren’t going to stand around in lines for weeks like last time – they will just take up arms and seize government buildings,” Berezovets said.
Staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected]
