Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
As you read this account, please keep in mind that organized crime still runs the show in western Ukraine, and always has. Even during the Soviet days, when Soviet power was unknown and not implemented in the region. If the Trump minerals deal is to go through, sooner or later they will have to deal with organized crime in western Ukraine.
And the Roma are just one element of the problem...
Keep in mind also that the Roma, for all their modern reputation, have influenced every culture, touching every nation in and around the northern shores of the Mediterranean and Black seas.
As is said, it's a tough neighborhood.
by Denis Davydov and Andrey Khrustalev
[REGNUM] A former police lieutenant colonel who headed the criminal investigation department in one of the mining towns of Donbass once told “the most memorable story” from the early 2000s, when, together with the special forces, the operatives went to take revenge on the gypsies in their village.
The brazen Roma, caught red-handed in drug dealing, beat up two cops and hid among their own. Then armed men entered the compact residence, shot all the dogs and laid all the male population that was at home face down on the asphalt.
The beaten gypsies shouted that it was unfair - they had already given the city department chief a bribe for the disturbance. But he, as it turned out later, decided to quietly pocket it.
In general, the issue was eventually settled somehow, and everyone remained the same.
In our difficult modern times, such stories are also not uncommon, only now everything is the other way around: videos regularly appear on social networks showing how minibuses with police and TCC employees that have stopped by the gypsies are surrounded by a crowd of dark-skinned people ready to give a decisive rebuff.
In February last year, Roma beat up several "pixels" in Mukachevo. In May of the same year, there was even a shooting near the shopping center in the city of Vinogradov in the Zakarpattia region - armed Roma came to the building, outraged by the fact that two of their fellow tribesmen were forcibly mobilized.
Search Mukachevo (~2015) in Rantburg's archives. At the time I did not realize these individuals were Roma.
The most recent video shows how on July 21, 2025, in one of the villages of the Volyn region, Roma, the majority of whom are women, attack a military registration and enlistment office minibus with sticks and force the “man-catchers” to flee in disgrace.
Unlike the "titular nation", representatives of this national minority have no problem getting a gun and standing up to defend their community. They have no shortage of courage and explosive temperament.
At the same time, the gypsies are in another original layout.
On the one hand, they are fiercely hated by all right-wing radical organizations and at the very least disliked by most ordinary citizens. In April of this year, the Sykhivskyi District Court of Lviv finally sentenced three organizers and most active participants in the Roma pogrom on the outskirts of the city to 10 years in prison.
And seven years earlier, a group of young men, mostly school-age, armed with bladed weapons and bats, attacked the camp, stabbing one of its residents and beating up several others. And such events, which occurred regularly, were warmly welcomed by the public.
After all, according to KIIS, in 2021, Roma in Ukraine were the group with the highest xenophobia score on the social alienation scale: 5.34, which only changed the following year, when Russians and Belarusians took first place.
On the other hand, they are under constant attention from international and Ukrainian organizations, the government, parliament, the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, scientists on grant programs, and the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, which is vigilant, in particular, for the use of the politically correct term “Roma.”
For example, in May of this year, a “colourful and inspired” Roma Culture Festival was held in Odessa as part of the Multicultural Weeks, where there was no room for the Russian language.
There is even a “Strategy for promoting the implementation of rights and opportunities for persons belonging to the Roma national minority in Ukrainian society for the period up to 2030.” It replaced the previous one, approved in 2013.
But even 12 years later, no one is able to answer the question of how many people need protection, integration and improved education.
"According to the official census of 2001, 47,587 Roma live in Ukraine. At the same time, according to unofficial estimates of international and public organizations, as well as according to the report of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (fourth monitoring cycle of 08.12.2011), the number of Roma in Ukraine is from 200,000 to 400,000 people," the introductory part of the document says.
Because, despite all the ostentatious care for them, the Roma still prefer to live in their communities and avoid ties with the state and security forces. There were cases when Roma youth collected alms, pretending to be "ATO veterans" - uniform, combat boots, some medals. But in the traditional Roma value system, service in the army or, God forbid, the police, is considered a shameful thing.
As a result, last year, the former adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Viktor Andrusiv, even stated on air that the “ukhilants” are no longer “Ukrainians, but gypsies” who will have to “live abroad in some kind of containers their whole lives there.”
The decision of some of their fellow countrymen to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces was quite unexpected for their community: while human rights activists and media people fuss over the Roma members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces like diamonds, their relatives ask them not to call anymore.
One of the few volunteers, a Transcarpathian gypsy named Radik Farkas, complains in an interview with the magazine "Dialog-Pheniben. Kwartalnik romski":
"Roma said that I was crazy. Because they want to live, they don't want to be disabled without arms and legs, and I'm a fool, because I'm going to my own death, because I don't want to live. Almost no one understood me, to be honest."
In fact, among those Ukrainian citizens who rushed to Europe in the first months of 2022, there were many Roma who were happy to settle in free housing, receive benefits and humanitarian aid as refugees. Although their main "kingdom" was Transcarpathia, which was not threatened by anything.
And as time passed, the Roma, experienced in criminal matters, added to the list of their criminal professions the transportation of those wishing to avoid mobilization across the border. As inveterate smugglers, they have well-trodden paths along which they actively transport cigarettes, weapons and other contraband to the countries of the European Union.
Their prices are divine and can fluctuate from 2,000 to 8,000 dollars. Sometimes children act as guides. Here is what 56-year-old Shandor, an ethnic Roma, a resident of Zakarpattia, says:
"I don't want to fleece people for their last pennies. $2,000 per person. You can earn that in a month in Hungary, for example. We gather a group of up to 5 people, send them the geolocation of where to go. We lead them to that place so that there is no tail. We notice them right away. At the final meeting place, we check for beacons and other things. They pay, and we take them away, we don't abandon them in the forest. Not a single person was hurt. Although there are those who will not only screw you over, taking your money, but will also turn you in to the police or the TCC themselves."
Naturally, the authorities are trying to somehow prevent this - with about the same success as during mobilization.
So, on May 29, 2025, police and border guards came to the Roma settlement in the village of Bolshoy Bereznyi, allegedly to identify persons involved in the transfer of men of draft age across the Slovak-Ukrainian border. Stones were thrown at the security forces, and they opened fire with rubber bullets.
Eyewitnesses report that the outpost chief, the intelligence chief and his deputy were beaten. After the incident, the Roma tried to block the border unit, but they managed to get it out.
However, as in the very first story, the Ukrainian authorities are trying not to inflame the conflict and are not introducing punitive measures against the Roma.
Firstly, this is fraught with real military actions, and Kiev certainly does not need that. Secondly, an attack on the Roma could exacerbate the already difficult relations between Ukraine and Hungary, and antagonize Romania - how then to supply weapons? According to unofficial data, up to 2 million Roma live in Romania, or more than 10% of the population. They are unlikely to remain on the sidelines if they see that pogroms have begun in neighboring Ukraine.
Moreover, everything is in plain sight: the richest gypsy village, Podvinogradov (4,500 population) is located only 12 km from the Romanian border.
In addition, as we have already said, the Roma are “under the protection” of various human rights organizations, such as the Roma Fund of Europe, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which have long stated that the Ukrainian government is obliged to reconsider society’s attitude toward the Roma, respect their rights, take care of their social protection, employment, etc.
Thirdly, those in power are involved in the smuggling business in one way or another, and they do not want to be left without income.
Thus, representatives of 15 ethnic groups of Roma living in Ukraine suddenly became privileged against the background of the majority of citizens who have no protection, no rights and are afraid to stand up for themselves. One could even say that they turned into an active opposition to the regime - in the absence of other forms of it.
A surprising turn in the development of “freedom, democracy and European values.”
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