Two police officers have been arrested after allegedly torturing and raping a woman, the National Police announced on May 25.
The officers in question worked at a police station in Kaharlyk, a town of just under 14,000 people located 75 kilometers south of Kyiv. A criminal investigation has been opened into rape, torture, and abuse of office, but formal charges have not yet been filed.
In response to the case, the National Police of Ukraine suspended not only the two officers from duty, but also the whole staff of the Kaharlyk police station. All employees of the station will be vetted before being allowed to return to work.
The case highlights what critics of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov see as the government’s failure to reform the police and bring an end to lawlessness and violence in law enforcement.
The 26-year-old woman from Kaharlyk was brought to the police station on the night of May 23 to be questioned as a witness to an alleged theft.
According to the State Investigation Bureau, one of the police officers put a gas mask and handcuffs on the woman, fired a gun above her head and raped her several times.
The police officers also allegedly assaulted a man who was at the station at the same time. According to the bureau, they broke the man’s ribs and nose at the station, the bureau said. They made him kneel, beat him on the head with batons, put a gas mask on him, and fired a gun over his head, according to investigators.
History of lawlessness
The Kaharlyk case was hardly the first instance of police officers violating the rights of Ukrainians through excessive force or negligence.
In January, protests erupted in the city of Kakhovka in Ukraine’s southern Kherson Oblast after a former police officer allegedly murdered local man Volodymyr Chebukin. The main eyewitness to the murder was a police officer acquainted with the suspect.
Chebukin’s relatives and protesters in Kakhovka have accused police of covering up for the suspect. They also claim that the witness to the murder, who currently serves in the police, may have taken part in the killing itself and that surveillance cameras disappeared from the crime scene.
In June 2019, drunken police officers in the town of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky in Kyiv Oblast allegedly shot a five-year-old boy, Kyrylo Tliavov, in the head while shooting at tin cans for target practice. Tliavov died in a Kyiv hospital several days later. The two suspects charged with killing him were released from custody in May 2020.
In 2016, the wife of Oleksandr Tsukerman called the police after a quarrel with her husband in the town of Kryve Ozero in Mykolayiv Oblast. According to eyewitness testimony, six police officers arrived and beat Tsukerman with batons. After that, one of the officers shot Tsukerman four times and killed him.
In response, local residents protested against the police’s actions and tried to storm the police headquarters.
The Kryve Ozero and Kakhovka events are reminiscent of riots in the town of Vradiivka in Mykolayiv Oblast in 2013.
Back then, four police officers in Vradiivka raped and beat local resident Iryna Krashkova, breaking her skull. After a lack of reaction from the authorities and a court’s refusal to arrest the suspects, locals stormed the police headquarters, and rallies against police violence in Vradiivka were held throughout Ukraine.
Failed reform?
In 2015 to 2016, Ukraine conducted a long-awaited reform of its police force. Many hoped this would drive corrupt officers from the force and transform the police from an instrument of state violence into true defenders of citizens’ rights.
However, success has been limited. Ultimately, only 5,656 police officers, or about 6 percent of the force, were fired as a result of new vetting procedures for officers. Of these, many have subsequently been reinstated by the courts.
Avakov has faced accusations of blocking the reform, which he denies. Anti-corruption activists left the police vetting commissions in 2016, arguing that Avakov had made it impossible for them to oust corrupt police officers.
