The war has changed the order of world organized crime: Ukrainian gangsters no longer want to cooperate with Russian

War is death, pain, poverty and a continuous humanitarian crisis and catastrophe. But, oddly enough, it is the war that can help defeat one of the troubles of Ukraine - organized crime. MCToday.

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Breaking ties with the Russian criminals, which have been formed for decades, has already yielded positive results.

Alexander Otdelnov has an unusual lure for tourists - a smuggling museum. Smuggling has been flowing through his native Odessa since the 19th century. Until it closed due to COVID-XNUMX, the museum displayed everything from pearls and pistols that had infiltrated Imperial Russia to more modern loot.

Then the big war began in February 2022. “The port stopped working and everything stopped,” says Otdelnov. It’s not just the tourist flows that have ended.

Odessa was a key node in a huge criminal network centered in Ukraine and Russia, which reached the vast expanses from Afghanistan to the Andes. It was part of "the strongest criminal ecosystem in Europe," according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC) think tank.

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The Russian invasion hit the underworld like an earthquake. The vast majority of bitter Ukrainian mafiosi have ceased cooperation with their Russian "colleagues".

“We are thieves, we are against any state, but we decided that we are for Ukraine,” says one of the representatives of the criminal world.

Violation of the well-established mechanism

Profitable heroin smuggling routes are changing, affecting the prices and profits of crime syndicates thousands of miles away. If the supply disruption is prolonged, it could change the face of global crime. This will also change Ukraine.

The country has been fighting corruption since it left the Soviet Union in 1991. The Revolution of Dignity of 2013-14 toppled the corrupt president and part of the oligarchy behind him.

In 2019, Vladimir Zelensky was elected president. He began to carry out reforms to fight the mafia. But it was a half-finished business at best. Prior to the invasion, GITOC ranked Ukraine 34th from the bottom out of 193 countries in terms of its crime index and third in Europe. Ukraine also scored poorly on tolerance for corruption.

The criminal world in the government-controlled parts of Ukraine until 2022 periodically and brutally waged internecine wars. However, there were three aspects that linked Ukraine to the world's criminal markets. First, the smuggling “superhighway” connecting Russia and Ukraine runs through parts of eastern Ukraine that were occupied by Russia in 2014. Secondly, global smuggling centers in Odessa and other Black Sea ports. And, finally, factories in Ukraine for the production of prohibited goods for export.

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This infrastructure supported different business models for different products. Ukraine has been a "side" but promising transit route for heroin from Afghanistan, increasing the flow through the Balkans and the Caucasus. Before the war, some of the largest heroin seizures in Europe took place here. Cocaine from Latin America went through the Black Sea. In another direction, the bandits exported weapons to Asia and Africa, including from the port of Nikolaev. In 2020, Ukraine overtook China to become the largest source of illegal tobacco in Europe. Local production of amphetamine has been on the rise, with 67 illegal labs dismantled last year, the highest number in any country.

The war has changed everything, creating "an unacceptable risk environment for international illicit trade," according to a new US government report. The Black Sea ports were closed or significantly restricted for shipping. The border between Kyiv-controlled Ukraine and the territories occupied by Russia has become a fortified chain of killing fields that interrupts the “highway”. Mobilization in Ukraine has deprived the underworld of manpower, and martial law has limited or stopped a wide range of criminal activities. In addition, the curfew complicates the movement at night.

Ukrainian bandits abandon their Russian "colleagues".

“It is one thing to be called a criminal; it’s quite another to consider yourself a traitor,” says Mark Galeotti, author of Villains: The Russian Supermafia.

Loyalty to Ukraine is risk control and patriotism. “If we were annexed to Russia, many of the imprisoned guys could be transferred somewhere far away,” explains a criminal representative. — Russian caretakers are ruthless. None of us need this. Therefore, we will do the dirty work for Ukraine.”

Change of "criminal geopolitics"

The effects of the war are being felt throughout the criminal underworld as smuggling networks are reconfigured to bypass Ukraine. Turkish customs officials say more heroin and methamphetamine are flowing across the border with Iran. In the first quarter of 2022, Lithuanian border guards noticed a fourfold increase in the volume of illicit tobacco compared to the same period last year. Estonian officials cooperating with Europol, police agencies

om the EU, seized 3,5 tons of Latin American cocaine in the port of Muuga, worth about half a billion dollars, last year. The blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports and increased controls in Western Europe may also explain the recent large seizures of illicit goods in Russia. On April 10, authorities seized nearly 700 kilograms of cocaine in Moscow. Russian craftsmen near the border with Belarus are now cashing in on smuggling luxury goods into Russia, especially designer handbags.

The war also provides new opportunities for bandits in Ukraine. One way is human smuggling. The UN estimates that about 5 million Ukrainian refugees are under temporary protection in Europe, and statistical modeling of historical trends suggests that perhaps 100 could become victims of human trafficking.

There is also a market for the illegal export of men from Ukraine. Sometimes it can be simple - people are let through because of Ukrainian passport control. At least 8 men have already been caught trying to leave the country, mostly to Moldova or Poland.

Smugglers take from $5 to $000. However, the scale of human trafficking is not as bad as it could be. “It happens,” says a senior Europol official, “but much less frequently than we expected.”

And what about Russia

The long-term impact of the war on crime in Russia is likely to be disastrous. According to Galeotti, Russia has strengthened ties to organized crime that were already established, although only occasionally used. Russian mafiosi operating outside the country were required to deposit a portion of their income into so-called "black accounts" that Russian spies could access to cover their operating expenses. The criminals were recruited to act as agents of the Kremlin's intelligence services, in part to help obtain badly needed embargoed semiconductors for the war effort.

Control by the Kremlin, or those close to it, of Western companies in Russia will usher in a new era of cronyism, while sanctions that have forced the masking of cross-border transactions will further reduce transparency and accountability.

For Ukraine, the long-term picture is less clear. A frozen conflict can certainly lead to danger. Prior to the invasion, there were anywhere from 7 to 9 million legal firearms in Ukraine. Perhaps the same number was illegal. Obviously, there are even more weapons in the country now.

History shows that wars fuel the arms trade: weapons from Yugoslavia are used in crimes across Europe. Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock warned of a possible surge in the small arms trade. However, so far so good. “We do not see arms trafficking on a systematic or organized basis,” explains a Europol spokesman.

The drug business may also be doing well again. The US government recently announced the expansion of a more extensive network of small drug labs in Ukraine, which sell goods on the Internet and send them by mail.

The upgrade process bears the greatest risk. Last month, the World Bank estimated the cost of rebuilding Ukraine at $411 billion, including $92 billion for transport and $69 billion for housing. Such large-scale projects can easily fall prey to the mafia, which interferes with government procurement and tendering systems to gain access to land, subsidies and licenses.

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But still, there is still an opportunity to reduce the volume of organized crime in Ukraine. The main efforts must come from within the country. There is a law passed in December on urban planning reform: the construction industry is prone to "abuse of power", "corruption" and "avoid punishment". In January, Zelenskiy fired four deputy ministers and five regional governors for bribery. “Any internal problems that interfere with the state are cleaned out,” he said.

External influence can also help: reconstruction funds come predominantly from foreigners and come with certain obligations. Ukraine's final EU membership is still many years away, but the process of getting closer to EU norms is a lever to fight organized crime. The country received candidate status back in June.

Students of organized crime around the world consider it true that war and social instability create opportunities for gangsters and their associates. However, now we see the sometimes exceptional and unusual experience of Ukraine, which can lead to a different result.

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The war severed the physical and social arteries between the country and Russian criminal networks that had been building up for decades, and possibly for years to come. This has given the Ukrainian state an impetus to develop further public legitimacy in the fight against the oligarchy and may increase Western involvement in the country's economy, even control over it.

None of the experts, of course, believes that contraband in Odessa will remain only in the museum. But there is a chance that Ukraine will finally cease to be a haven for criminals.

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