Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include more recent figures on the number of arrests and the charges in the shooting.
Three people were wounded during a shootout in the city of Brovary, just outside Kyiv, as a dispute between bus operators turned violent during the early morning hours of May 29.
Twenty-one people were arrested. Law enforcement has launched three criminal proceedings into group hooliganism involving firearms, illegal handling of weapons and intentional destruction or damage of property, the National Police stated. Later in the day, they added charges of an assassination attempt of more than two people.
According to the police’s preliminary investigation, the conflict erupted between legal and illegal private bus companies that provide passenger transportation.
Private buses — called “marshrutky” in Ukrainian — form the backbone of transportation in many cities of Ukraine and also operate between cities. But private buses have also been a persistent trouble spot in Ukrainian infrastructure, often providing subpar service in unsafe vehicles.
The business is frequently associated with illegal groups that mysteriously win tenders to provide transport services or operate outside the law.
Police received a call about shooting in Brovary, a city of 108,000 people 15 kilometers northeast of Kyiv, at about 7 a.m.
In a video published on Facebook, dozens of men, most of them with their faces covered, roam the streets of a residential neighborhood and fire shots from pistols and rifles.
After police arrived at the scene, they detained ten men, who appeared to have come to Brovary from other regions of Ukraine.
Law enforcement has confiscated weapons found at the scene of the crime and is currently establishing their ownership. Investigators are now inspecting the scene and looking for other participants in the clash.
Later in the day, the police arrested one more suspect in Brovary, five more suspects in Zhytomyr Oblast and five more in Vinnytsia Oblast.
Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko offered a different explanation of the confrontation than the police. He said the shooting erupted between illegal groups that run a protection racket over marshrutka transportation in Kyiv Oblast.
Gerashchenko said that these criminal showdowns result from officials’ opaque distribution of routes in this part of Kyiv Oblast between business entities.
“Routes should be distributed legally and honestly, and not under the table and for bribes,” Gerashchenko wrote on Facebook on May 29.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov wrote on Twitter that the shooting is the consequence of corruption in route distribution and the involvement of illegal groups in the bus business.
Avakov also said that mass arrests are continuing in the case.
