The number of crimes in Kyiv and across Ukraine showed no major change in connection with Euro 2012, with only a handful of crimes committed against foreigners.
Interior Minister
Vitaliy Zakharchenko said the number of
crimes committed against foreign fans has been quite low. During the
first five days into the tournament the police registered 26 crimes
connected to the games, most of them against foreigners. These
included thefts, robberies and fraud.
Volodymyr Polishchuk, an
Interior Ministry spokesman, did not go into details of the number of
crimes, but noted that during the championship “the number of
murders and lethal car accidents has dropped.”
He also said that there
are 10 to 20 incidents per day where foreigners need help from police
in Kyiv, mostly people getting lost or losing their documents.
The British Embassy
in Kyiv said that since the beginning of the games only 10 British
fans contacted the embassy. All of them either got lost or lost their
passports.
Since the beginning of the
championship Kyiv police caught 18 pickpockets in downtown Kyiv
alone. Polishchuk also said that several foreigners were detained by
the police yesterday, June 18, when they tried to illegally enter the
Chornobyl exclusion zone.
“Given the number of
people and the magnitude of events, there are not many crimes,”
said Polishchuk.
Some politicians,
like head of Kyiv Administration Oleksandr Popov, have even boasted
that the crime rate in the capital during Euro 2012 dropped.
“The mentality of
Kyivans is a good trait of character. They
are peaceful and there is no aggression,” he explained.
Kyiv Post staff
writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at onyshkiv@kyivpost.com
