Interior Minister of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko has said that statements about a return to the "bloody nineties" and contract murders with the use of guns in Ukraine are unreasonable.
“Any talk of the helplessness of policies, about chaos on the
streets, about a return to the bloody nineties is without reason,” the
minister said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday.
“It’s not the fault of the police that there are citizens of Ukraine
or non-Ukrainians who are ready to carry out a contract murder. Our
task is to catch them, send them to pre-trial detention and then to
prison. We are coping with this task and will cope in the future,”
Lutsenko said.
The minister also said that since the beginning of this year
foreigners committed about 2,000 crimes, including 45 premeditated
murders, 70 attacks, 133 robberies, 588 larcenies and 181 frauds.
During 2007-2009 the subdivisions of the interior ministry broke up
21 ethnic-based organized crime groups, 17 of which were detected by
subdivisions fighting against organized crime.
Referring to the State Frontier Service, Lutsenko said that currently there are officially 270,000 foreigners in Ukraine.
