The crackdown on pro-Ukrainian activists and veterans in the city of Dnipro on May 9 has exposed the resurgence of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s lawless and corrupt police force, critics argue.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov’s opponents have called for his resignation. The minister has also faced criticism due to numerous corruption accusations against him and the failure of the police reform.
Crackdown
On May 9, pro-Ukrainian activists and Ukrainian veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine protested against a march in honor of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II in Dnipro as part of the Immortal Regiment movement launched by Russian authorities.
The participants of the march carried portraits of their ancestors killed in the war, and some also held communist and separatist symbols. Participants of a similar march in Kyiv were also filmed expressing support for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Regional riot police – the successor to Yanukovych’s notorious Berkut police unit – and pro-government thugs, known as titushki, then cracked down on the activists and veterans in Dnipro.
One video shows the police and titushki beating veterans and a police officer apparently giving instructions to the titushki. Another video shows the police brutally beating pro-Ukrainian activists with batons, kicking them with their legs and humiliating them by laying them down on the ground belly down.
Some of the veterans also had their heads smashed by the police.
The crackdown has been compared with the violent beating of protesters by Berkut police officers on Nov. 20, 2013, which triggered the EuroMaidan Revolution, and the close cooperation of police and titushki in their clashes with pro-Ukrainian activists in Odesa on May 2, 2014.
“Separatists with the Kyiv government’s silent approval are boosting their clout not only in Dnipro. They have created private armies in Odesa, Bessarabia and Kharkiv,” ex-Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili wrote on Facebook on May 10, referring to pro-Russian marches and pro-government titushki all over Ukraine. “…What we saw in Dnipro is just the beginning unless we put an end to this. But only a new government – not one that is discredited and mired in horsetrading – can introduce law and order.”
Authorities’ reaction
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said on May 10 that prosecutors would investigate the titushki’s cooperation with the police.
Maxim Muzyka, an advisor to Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov, said on May 11 that seven titushki were under arrest and seven were wanted. Five of the detained titushki were charged with hooliganism, organizing riots and battery, the Prosecutor General’s Office said on May 12.
Asked why no police officers were arrested, Dnipro Oblast Police spokeswoman Anna Storchevska told the Kyiv Post that a commission would investigate their alleged violations.
Reacting to the scandal, Avakov on May 10 fired Dnipro Oblast Police Chief Repeshko, Dnipro Police Chief Bidylo and their deputies in charge of public security. However, Avakov has been lambasted because Repeshko is a close associate of the minister.
Repeshko was replaced with Vitaly Hlukhoverya, who has also triggered a controversy. A photo of Hlukhoverya with a sweater reading “USSR” has been shared on social networks, triggering speculation on his sympathy for the Soviet Union.
The photo from Hluhoverya’s social networks was dated 2014 but Avakov claimed it was taken in 2005 when he wore a sweater of the Soviet hockey team.
Hlukoverya headed Dnipro city police under former President Leonid Kuchma.
In 2010 to 2013 he worked as the Interior Ministry’s representative in Russia and was seen as a close ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko, which was denied by Storchevska.
Hlukhoverya was appointed as chief of Dnipro Oblast police in 2014, when he failed to fire or punish police officers involved in crackdowns on EuroMaidan protesters. At that time he was seen as a protégé of tycoon Igor Kolomoisky, who was the region’s governor.
Subsequently Hlukhoverya headed Dnipro Oblast police’s controversial anti-human trafficking department. Employyes of this department have said during vetting that they had looked for prostitutes for their superiors.
In 2016 the Nashi Hroshi investigative show reported that Hlukhoverya’s wife had acquired a Land Cruiser and a Mazda that were worth 15 times more than the family’s annual income.
Other controversies
Another controversy emerged when ex-police official Rostyslav Zavorotny, who is accused of distributing 156 assault rifles from Interior Ministry warehouses to titushki during the EuroMaidan Revolution, was released on April 28 because the deadline for his detention expired.
Meanwhile, a scandal erupted in April when several videos were published with a person who resembles Yury Goluban, the commander of a special forces unit at the National Police’s Donetsk Oblast branch, in the company of Kremlin-backed fighters.
Moreover, four former Berkut riot police officers charged with murder, torture and assault fled to Russia on April 9–11, after courts released them from custody. Avakov and his advisor Anton Gerashchenko have protected and praised some Berkut officers.
Though the Berkut unit, known for its brutality, was formally liquidated on Feb. 25, 2014, most of the Berkut officers remained in the police.
The National Police told the Kyiv Post that, as of Feb. 1, 2014, there were 3,944 Berkut employees, and, as of April 1, 2014 there were 3,538 riot police staff – the successor of Berkut.
In Kharkiv Oblast, 92 former Berkut employees are working, and 76 Berkut police officers have been fired since the EuroMaidan Revolution, the regional police said. In Kyiv, at least 31 former Berkut officers were successfully vetted in 2016 and continued to work in the police, according to a document obtained by the Kyiv Post.
Meanwhile, the National Guard told the Kyiv Post that 17 former Berkut officers were working there.
Failure of reform
Critics say that the Interior Ministry’s protection of ex-Berkut officers exposes the lack of police reform, with just 6 percent of the police force fired after vetting and most of those dismissed reinstated by judges.
Two Georgian-born reformers, Deputy Interior Minister Yekaterina Zguladze-Glucksmann and National Police Chief Khatia Dekanoidze, resigned last year. Dekanoidze cited political interference and a lack of power to bring about change and later left Ukraine to pursue a political career in Georgia.
Meanwhile, the alleged murder of a man by police officers in the city of Kryve Ozero in Mykolayiv Oblast on Aug. 24 exposed the flaws of Ukraine’s ongoing police reform, civic activists say. In mid-2013 a similar incident took place in the city of Vradiivka in the same oblast. Massive protests triggered by a murder attempt by police officers on a woman in Vradiivka became a precursor of the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
