Ukraine has long been trying to depict itself as a modern and welcoming European country, yet the long sequence of casualties among dissidents proves that Ukraine isn’t safe.
Foreign intelligence agents roam free in Kyiv, facing little resistance from the Security Service of Ukraine and other law enforcement agencies.
The hanging of a prominent Belarusian activist Vitaliy Shyshov in a Kyiv park on Aug. 3 is only the latest of a series of suspicious deaths among foreign dissidents in Ukraine.
Belarus-born journalist Pavel Sheremet, a prominent critic of Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko, was blown up in his car in downtown Kyiv in July 2016.
In 2017, former Russian lawmaker-turned-Kremlin critic Denis Voronenkov was shot dead in downtown Kyiv, while gunmen killed Amina Okueva, a high-profile Chechen activist and war veteran, 10 kilometers southwest of the country’s capital.
High-ranking Ukrainian military personnel have witnessed a similar faith. In June 2017, military intelligence colonel, Maksym Shapoval, was killed by a car bomb in Kyiv. Months prior, Oleksandr Kharaberiush, a Security Service colonel, was killed in a car blast in Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast.
Most cases have been linked to foreign hit squads.
Former Belarus KGB head Vadym Zaitsev was taped discussing an assassination plot against Sheremet, while Okueva’s murderers had ties to the leadership of the Chechen Republic.
All cases remain unsolved to this day. Dictators Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin have long enjoyed impunity despite poisoning opposition leaders, killing political opponents, jailing activists and rigging elections. And it looks like Kyiv is their favorite playground.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has been vocal in his attempt to turn Ukraine into a hub for young and forward-looking people fleeing Putin’s Russia and Lukashenko’s Belarus.
Yet lower taxes, fast-track visas and government support is sometimes no match for the lack of security for those seeking political refuge in Ukraine.
The murderous regimes of Lukashenko and Putin won’t stop tracking down dissidents and ordering their executions. Today, Belarus activists, Kremlin critics and high-profile Ukrainians are easy targets.
It must stop. Ukraine needs to reform its Security Service to do its job — protect the nation against security threats.
If not, dissidents will keep dying and it will be Ukraine’s fault for not doing enough to protect those who were promised a refuge.
Ukraine lives in a rough neighborhood. It won’t be able to change its geography.
While it’s challenging, Ukraine has every chance to strengthen its future by adopting democratic principles, forming effective institutions – especially in the law enforcement and judicial sectors – and cutting links to the retrograde dictatorships of Putin and Lukashenko.
The best way to help democratic forces in both nations is to offer them refuge, but more importantly, to show the strength of living the democratic way.
