One person was killed and at least six injured in an overnight shootout in Olevsk, a town in Zhytomyr Oblast, 240 kilometers west of Kyiv.
The incident was reported by Oleksandr Nikolaychuk, a journalist and member of Zhytomyr Oblast council, on Jan. 16.
Nikolaychuk said that around midnight two cars and a minibus drove to the central square of Olevsk. A group of men “of athletic appearance” armed with guns and rifles jumped out of the vehicles and began shooting at a crowd standing outside of a coffee shop and parking lot. During the incident someone threw a grenade, injuring several people.
“Some were taken to hospital by ambulance, some were taken by friends and bystanders, others scattered, and treated themselves,” wrote Nikolaychuk.
The National Police department in Zhytomyr oblast confirmed that seven people had been hospitalized – four residents of Olevsk, and three from Lviv. One person died on the way to the hospital, police said.
Nikolaychuk said that the shootout was between criminal groups involved in illegal amber extraction, and that Zhytomyr Oblast had been terrorized by such “bandits” for two years.
Local police didn’t back up his claim, however.
“Every illegal amber extraction site is documented, and we don’t connect the shooting directly to them,” the Zhytomyr national police press service told the Kyiv Post.
The police have classified the incident as “an internal dispute” resulting from disagreements between Olevsk criminal groups and visitors from Lviv. The investigation continues.
Amber wars
Ukraine’s northwestern oblasts of Rivne, Zhytomyr and Volyn are known for their amber deposits. Since the end of state-controlled mining during the Soviet period, illegal mining practices have grown rapidly, causing huge social and environmental problems.
The trade is extremely lucrative. Miners in Rivne Oblast told the Kyiv Post in June that a kilogram of amber is worth around $4,500 on the black market.
Ukrainian amber is illegally sold to Poland and the Baltics states, where documentation about its place of origin is forged, and it is sold on to the rest of the world.
The last major incident occurred in June in the village of Obysche in Zhytomyr Oblast, where three people were injured in shootout.
There have been numerous violent incidents between the local authorities and local miners since the EuroMaidan Revolution, before which the trade operated more peacefully under a protection racket run by local officials and police.
Shortly after the revolution, in May 2014, Volodymyr Prodyvus, a former lawmaker of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, came to Rivne Oblast with 100 armed men to offer some of the miners “protection.” His men then proceeded to shoot at the locals, with three locals being injured. The locals fought back, and since then have been organizing themselves to protect their own interests.
The next violent incident followed on Sept. 28, 2015, when several groups of amber miners and the police clashed in the forest in Volyn Oblast. More than 100 people were arrested. After the incident, the miners largely agreed to stop mining until a law legalizing their work was adopted.
But the law was never passed and in spring 2016, amber miners began to protest again as the police continued to ask for protection payments.
Earlier in March, 10 police officers were hospitalized in Rivne Oblast after a fight broke out between amber miners and police. The miners said that by law the mines belong to the people, but that in reality the police and oligarchs control them.
In July the Prosecutor General’s Office, Security Service of Ukraine, and Interior Affairs Ministry launched a crackdown on “amber schemes” with raids in Rivne Oblast. As a result, four people were arrested on suspicion of illegally mining amber.
