TARAS KUZIO : Crime and politics in Crimea // Ukraine maps chart Crimea's troubled past
Links between business, politics and crime in the former USSR
Western media are widely reporting that self-declared Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov was an organised crime boss in the 1990s, with the nickname ‘Goblin.’ The link between crime and politics in Crimea seems to have caught Western media off guard, and yet abundant evidence of such links has been available for a long time from a variety of sources, including US diplomatic cables. In the 1990s, Crimea was a major source of organised crime, and had the largest number of murders of any Ukrainian region, according to former Police Chief Yuriy Lutsenko, with Donetsk coming second. Not coincidentally, Crimea and Donetsk were the strongholds of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
Links between business, politics and crime in the former USSR began to surface in the second half of the 1980s, at the same time as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev liberalised the economy. Crime exploded in three regions of Ukraine – Crimea, Donetsk and Odesa – where there were huge profits to be made from trade, tourism, property and the export of raw materials. During this legal vacuum, and at a time of the disintegration of one state (USSR) and a yet-to-be-built Ukraine, individuals such as Yanukovych, Aksyonov and their Donetsk and Crimean allies literally fought their way to the top. Those who survived the bloodshed, by the late 1990s were already attempting to transform themselves into biznesmeni.
Serhiy Taruta was appointed Donetsk governor by Kyiv’s then revolutionary leaders because although co-director of the Industrial Union of Donbas, he had never joined the Party of Regions, and supported the pro-Western opposition. In 2010, Yulia Tymosenko’s election headquarters were located in Kyiv’s Hyatt Hotel that he owns. A cable from the US Embassy in Kyiv reported that Taruta had dismissed the whole Donetsk-Regions group, saying 'they are all looters’, which, as clearly seen in the massive asset and budget stripping that occurred under Yanukovych. Former National Security and Defence Council Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin told US Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst that the Party of Regions was 'notable for its inclusion of criminal and anti-democracy figures.' Another cable described the Party of Regions as, 'long a haven for DONETSK-based mobsters and oligarchs,' led by 'DONETSK CLAN godfather Rinat Akhmetov.'
Akhmetov, who has close business ties to Yanukovych going back to the 1990s, backed him to the ignominious end, and has issued timid statements during the Maidan protests and Crimean invasion.
The Party of Regions elected organised crime leaders to the Ukrainian and Crimean parliaments and local government. In the March 2006 elections to the Crimean parliament and local councils, hundreds of candidates who had 'problems with the law,' according to then Interior Minister Lutsenko, ran in the election blocs ‘For Union!’ and ‘For Yanukovych!’
Many of these candidates were, like Aksyonov, members of the Seilem organised crime gang, such as its leader Aleksandr Melnyk who was elected in the ‘For Yanukovych!’ bloc. Yanukovych reportedly told a Party of Regions deputy who criticized this alliance with organised crime that, 'I take responsibility for him (Melnyk);'
and Prime Minister Yanukovych asked Police Chief Lutsenko to not touch 'my Sasha' (Melnyk).
The corrupt Prosecutor-General’s office assisted in protecting these ties between politics, business and crime. Former Deputy Prosecutor-General Renat Kuzmin ensured Melnyk evaded justice, after the Party of Regions lobbied the prosecutor’s office not to press charges. Lutsenko said, 'Having all the evidence connecting the (Seilem) gang to murders' Kuzmin 'releases the man who Yanukovych shelters, the head of an organised crime gang.' Lutsenko told the US Embassy in Kyiv that the Seilem organised crime gang had been responsible in the 1990s for 52 contract murders, including one journalist, two police officers, 30 businessmen and 15 organised crime competitors... read more:
Ukraine maps chart Crimea's troubled past
If Crimea were to join Russia after the planned referendum on 16 March, it would be the latest of many changes to the map of Ukraine during the country's troubled past. Passions are being fired by history, as the old maps in the British Library's collection reveal. Crimea, a small peninsula in the Black Sea, below Russia and Ukraine, is now the focus and flashpoint of the crisis, threatening to loosen ties with Kiev or even return to Russian rule. In the 18th Century, it was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, ruled by the Khan of the Crimean Tatars.
If Crimea were to join Russia after the planned referendum on 16 March, it would be the latest of many changes to the map of Ukraine during the country's troubled past. Passions are being fired by history, as the old maps in the British Library's collection reveal. Crimea, a small peninsula in the Black Sea, below Russia and Ukraine, is now the focus and flashpoint of the crisis, threatening to loosen ties with Kiev or even return to Russian rule. In the 18th Century, it was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, ruled by the Khan of the Crimean Tatars.
