You're reading: Beautiful Amber, Ugly Business

Two sides regularly clash on a muddy, crater-pocked, ravaged landscape in Ukraine – but this isn’t the war-torn east. It’s the northwestern region of the country, where miners and police are in conflict over the illegal extraction of amber.

In one recent incident, around 1,000 amber miners fought with police near the village of Klesiv in Rivne Oblast on March 30, leaving 10 officers hospitalized. No arrests were reported.

It was the latest in a string of lawless events in the country’s amber-mining areas, including armed attacks on border guards and police, large-scale smuggling of illegally-mined amber and environmental damage affecting huge areas of forest.

The situation has worsened to such an extent in recent weeks that on April 2, Khatia Dekanoidze, the head of National Police of Ukraine, announced the creation of a special emergency operations center to tackle illegal amber mining and civil unrest in Rivne, Zhytomyr and Volyn oblasts.

The center will consist of 150 staff officers from the Prosecutor General’s Office, the State Security Service (SBU) and the National Police of Ukraine.

On April 7, Dnipro-1, a special unit of the National Police of Ukraine, joined the group and the emergency operation center in Rivne Oblast.

“Dnipro-1 will launch special operations in Oblast and take part in creating the mechanism to prevent amber-industry-related crime and smuggling,” said Serhiy Knyazev, the head of police in Rivne Oblast, revealing no more details during a news conference on April 7.

Amber miners wash the gemstone from the bottom of the lake, using nets on one of the illegal amber mining areas in Zhytomyr Oblast in June 2015. (Dennis Kazansky)

Environmental damage

More than 300 tons of the amber gemstone are illegally extracted from deposits in Ukraine every year, bringing $300 million in income, Deputy Ecology Minister Svitlana Kolomiets, said at a news conference at the Ukrinform news agency in February.

The process that the miners use has laid waste to acres of ancient forest land. The miners cut down trees, and pump water into the ground, forming ponds in which the low-density gemstone is released from soil deposits and floats to the surface. The floating amber is skimmed off the surface of the ponds with nets. The miners leave behind them a treeless, muddy, waterlogged wasteland.

Kolomiets said illegal amber mining had destroyed 220 hectares of the forest in Zhytomyr Oblast, four hectares in Volyn Oblast and 1,691 hectares in Rivne Oblast in the past three years.

The amber rush in Ukraine is driven by two factors – widespread impoverishment in the country, exacerbated by the Kremlin’s war in the east, and rising demand for amber.

The price of amber has increased between 800 percent and 1,000 percent over the past five years due to demand from China, Polish amber expert Andrzej Wiszniewski said in an article in the UK newspaper the Guardian published on March 19.

The stone can fetch from $180 to $7,800 per kilogram, according to amber trading company Amber Europe (amber-europe.com).

The lowest price is for small pieces up to two grams in weight, while the top price is paid for large amber chunks from 300 to 400 grams in weight.

Law enforcement in Ukraine has been struggling to contain the illegal amber mining industry that has sprouted up in response to rising demand.

Olena Gitlyanska, the spokesperson of Ukraine’s SBU security service, told the Kyiv Post that during 2015 and 2016 the SBU investigated 37 criminal cases of illegal amber mining and smuggling, and confiscated 726 kilograms of amber.

Eighteen people were declared suspects, and four people were found guilty by the courts. “We closed six illegal amber production factories and confiscated 1.9 tons of amber,” said Gitlyanska.

That’s precious little, given the scale of the problem and the tremendous financial incentives for miners.

A photo from the amber miner’s group “Klondike” in Vkontakte shows an amber miner holding his trophy in Rivne Oblast. (Vkontakte/Klondike)

Money spinner

In 2015, the unemployment rate in Ukraine rose to 9.1 percent, according to the International Labor Organization. The minimum wage is Hr 1,378 ($51) per month or Hr 70 a day.

“An amber digger can earn Hr 500-1,000 a day. You’ll hardly get so much money anywhere else in Ukraine these days,” AutoMaidan civil activist Vitaly Unonets told the Kyiv Post.

The promise of such money is bringing people into the amber mining region from other parts of the country. During an AutoMaidan investigation, Unonets visited amber mining areas in Zhytomyr and Rivne Oblast, and filmed miners at work.

“In amber-digging areas of Rivne this year (in March) and Zhytomyr (July 2015), we saw a lot of cars with number plates from Kharkiv, Odesa and Kyiv,” said Unonets.

Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction lawmaker Boryslav Rosenblat, one of the authors of a draft law to more closely regulate amber mining, agreed with Unonets’ estimates, adding that a single plot of mining land can produce $1,000 worth of amber a day.

To manage the industry, amber miners have created numerous groups on the Russian social media website Vkontakte. In them, the diggers share photos of the shattered landscapes in mining areas, as well as images of their trophies — pieces of amber. They also make deals and find clients via social media.

Amber miners at work, using pumps, nets and other equipment for illegal amber mining on a claim in Rivne Oblast in March. (Vkontakte/Klondike)

Police protection

Worryingly, there are claims that Ukrainian law enforcement is not just unable to contain the lawlessness in the amber-mining regions – it could be illegally profiting from the illegal industry itself.

“The mining business is protected by law enforcement officials,” Rosenblat told the Kyiv Post.

Even Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is on record as claiming that 90 percent of the illegal amber business is protected by law enforcement agencies.

“I give you two weeks to stop the illegal amber mining in Rivne, Volyn and Zhytomyr oblasts, or I’ll come there myself and show who’s behind protecting it,” Poroshenko said during a meeting with western oblast law enforcement officials in Lviv Oblast.

That was nine months ago, in July 2015. But the president never showed up.

Moreover, even the bill that could legalize amber mining and selling in Ukraine, diverting some of the money from the illicit trade into the Ukrainian budget and limiting damage to the environment, has been buried in committee in parliament since November 2015, Rosenblat said.

Meanwhile, the General Prosecutor’s Office, the National Police, and the SBU blame each other for allowing the illegal industry to continue.

In an interview with the Kyiv Post, Artem Sytnyk, the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, said that the Prosecutor General’s Office is blocking an investigation into Oleh Nazaruk, a deputy head of the SBU’s Rivne Oblast branch.

Nazaruk has been accused of taking bribes to ignore illegal amber production. In December 2015, SBU investigators declared Nazaruk a suspect in criminal mismanagement and illegally earning more than $75,000 a month.

Prosecutors filed a notice of suspicion against Nazaruk, but it was subsequently canceled by a court.

Rivne prosecutors also arrested an SBU colonel and the head of the Border Guard Service of Rivne Oblast. According to a press release from the prosecutors’ office, both were involved in providing cover for the illegal mining business in the 10-kilometer border zone in Rivne Oblast.

And in an SBU press release from April 11, the service said it had broken up a gang of seven local SBU and police officers in Rivne Oblast who had been involved in robbing amber traders and miners. In a raid on gang-members’ homes, the SBU said it had found weapons, mining equipment, stolen mobile phones and Hr 300,000 worth of cash in various currencies.

Amber jewelry with an insect inclusion. (AFP)