In the sixth year of the conflict in the Donbass, Ukrainians almost did not respond to the news about the detention of arms dealers, as well as the discovery of hiding places with cartridges and grenade launchers. They are no longer surprised by hacking ATMs or sorting out relationships using grenades and machine guns, although the country is officially allowed to own only traumatic, firearms, hunting weapons and award pistols.
DW knew how many illegal weapons were in the hands of Ukrainian citizens and how to seize them.
The Ukrainian public organization " The study covered the period from September to December 2019.. According to the head of CENSS Vadim Chernysh, during this time there were 548 cases of illegal use, storage or sale of weapons.
And for the whole of 2019, according to the GPU, 6,204 offenses were qualified as illegal handling of weapons, ammunition and explosives. Of these, only about 100 cases are attributable to owners of officially registered hunting weapons..
At the same time, the methodology used by the Prosecutor General’s Office for accounting for offenses with the use of firearms and explosives does not give a complete picture, said the officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Andriy, who asked not to give his name.
In Ukraine, there is no reliable control even of legal firearms. " If someone provokes the use of violence between citizens, or their confrontation with the government, the consequences will be very serious, "
Data for reports to the Prosecutor General is provided, among other things, by the National Police. It is she who gives permission for the possession of weapons and controls its circulation.
Sometimes the prosecutor’s office may engage in the fight against the proliferation of illegal weapons and the SBU, said Yevgeny Krapivin, a lawyer at the non-governmental organization Resuscitation Reform Package. He is sure that in Ukraine there is no reliable control even over firearms that citizens legally own. It is supposed to be stored at home in a safe, in a non-combat situation, to be fired once every three years so that samples of cartridges are in the police base.
Experts are unanimous: six years ago, the country did not have a big problem with the trafficking of illegal weapons and ammunition. According to observers, it arose in February 2014, when the then Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine armed law enforcement officers with automatic weapons during the protests on the Maidan. In response to this, in some cities of western Ukraine, protesters seized the arsenals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, SBU, military units. " And part went to the black market "
The further fate of this weapon is unknown, Vadim Chernysh admits: “We need to take an inventory of all that the security forces seized from the documents. And what is legally on hand. It’s necessary to investigate and register all the firearms in the country "
According to Krapivin, since 2015, the number of criminal cases in connection with illegal arms trafficking has increased in Ukraine. And if the number of offenses with the use of firearms is growing, then this means that the number of illegal trunks in the hands of Ukrainians has increased, the expert says.
The reason, he adds, is simple - the conflict in the east of the country, the flow of weapons from the territory of Donbass not controlled by Kiev. " Today, rifled firearms can also be bought cheaply on the Internet, "
Security Service of Ukraine seeks to suppress illegal arms trafficking. " At that time, the contact line was constantly moving (in the Donbass. - Red.
), there was a constant rotation of military units and volunteer units, and the system of filtration measures at the places of departure from the anti-terrorist operation zone was just starting to be built, ”the SBU explained.
The response of the SBU also said that even today its employees are seizing weapons imported from combat zones in 2014-15. In 2019, for example, 500 firearms and 350 thousand rounds of ammunition, grenades and mines were withdrawn from circulation.