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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Once a year there should be a “Smilnytsia” at the customs post.
My followers have probably noticed the smuggling series that has been unfolding this past week at the unremarkable Ustyluh post of the Volyn Customs.
My colleague Taras Seredych carefully describes this series, which is as alike as two drops of water to the story I covered exactly a year ago at the Smilnytsia post of the Lviv Customs.
Conceptually, nothing new.
Dozens of vans every two of the four work shifts line up from the Polish side in kilometer-long queues and pass through Ustyluh without customs clearance, declaring up to 30% of the real volume of goods. 70% go past the eyes, scales, and conscientiousness of the customs officers on the designated shifts.
Interestingly, Taras was alerted to this story by ordinary carriers who were tired of standing in many-hour queues simply because for two shifts Ustyluh already has a customs visa-free regime.
True, selectively and not for free, but it works.
And although the story is only gaining momentum — because a metropolitan inspection detachment from the Department for Combating Smuggling and the KMM (both structures are traditionally key in decisions to let smuggling through) has already landed in Volyn, and the scheme’s performers (shift managers) have been suspended — we can confidently predict that, like last year’s Smilnytsia case, Ustyluh will end with only a temporary halt followed by a resumption of operations.
But the main difference from last year’s story is that the Ustyluh case is already fitting into the professional portfolio of the renewed team of Customs Head Orest Mandzii.
I don’t believe he personally gave the green light for this “operation” (as Taras writes in his posts); that would be too primitive and unprofessional.
But I gladly believe that his subordinates on the ground and in the key departments — Smuggling, KMM, and Tariffs — have begun to play their own game and stopped being afraid of change.
For too long Mandzii’s team promised to launch re-certification, never implemented the promised rotation of customs officers, and could not even determine whether scales are working at all border checkpoints — the absence or breakdown of which is key to the scheme for weighing goods at the border.
It seems smugglers have already felt the “weakness” of the reformers.
And where there is weakness — things move.
Even more so under conditions where pressure from full warehouses, vans, and trucks on the other side of the border has only been increasing in recent months. To be fair: from the start of Mandzii’s team’s work nothing was getting through.
And now, having overcome fear, the border has not just begun to leak. Some checkpoints like Ustyluh have gone full throttle.
But the most interesting twist in this story is Mandzii’s closeness to Volyn.
In January 2026 he and his team of NABU detectives seized a month’s cash box of the Volyn Customs of 850 thousand dollars, which was being formed for transfer “to Kyiv.” Along with the cash box, and as Mandzii mentioned in the interview, detectives seized the customs officers’ “comb.”
This is a document detailing who collects that cash box, from what, and how it is distributed up the vertical of the State Customs Service and among law enforcement.
So the current Head of Customs has a clear understanding of the entire internal workings of the Volyn smugglers.
How everything works, how it is collected at the border, how it is distributed, and who approves it.
And I don’t know whether it’s worth saying, but the main actors who collected the cash box in Volyn in January 2026 and the curators of the vans at Ustyluh in October 2026 are the same people. Globally, nothing has changed.
So why, knowing who, how, and for how much operates in Volyn, did Mandzii’s team allow such an obvious “slap”? Let’s file it under mysteries.
But the saddest thing is that the Ustyluh story will now be seized on by all opponents of change and reform at the customs. “Have you reformed it well?” — they will shout at every turn.
But what is there to say in response?
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