Once a year a “Smilnytsia” should happen at customs. My followers have probably noticed the smuggling series that has b...

Once a year a “Smilnytsia” should happen at customs.

My followers have probably noticed the smuggling series that has been unfolding this past week at the unremarkable Ustyluh checkpoint of the Volyn Customs.

My colleague Taras Seredych carefully describes this series, which is a carbon copy of the story I covered exactly one year ago at the Smilnytsia checkpoint of the Lviv Customs.

Conceptually, nothing new.

Dozens of vans every two of the four working shifts line up from the Polish side in kilometer-long queues and pass through Ustyluh without customs clearance, declaring 30% of the actual volume of goods. 70% go past the eyes, the scales, and the diligence of the customs officers on the designated shifts.

Interestingly, Taras was alerted to this story by ordinary carriers who were tired of standing in multi-hour queues simply because for two shifts Ustyluh already operates under de facto visa-free customs.

True, selectively and not for free, but it works.

And although the story is only gaining momentum—because a capital-based task force of inspectors from the Department of Contraband and the KMM has already landed in Volyn (both structures are traditionally key in deciding which contraband gets through), and the scheme’s executors (shift managers) have been suspended—we can confidently predict that, just like last year’s Smilnytsia case, Ustyluh will end only with 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 landing in the professional portfolio of the renewed team of Customs Head Orest Mandzii.

I don’t believe he personally approved this “operation” (as Taras writes in his posts); that would be too crude and unprofessional.

However, I readily believe that his subordinates on the ground and in the key departments—Contraband, KMM, and Tariffs—have started playing their own game and stopped fearing change.

Mandzii’s team promised to launch re-certification for too long, failed to carry out the promised rotation of customs officers, and couldn’t even determine whether scales are working at all checkpoints—absence or malfunction of which is central to the scheme of understating the weight of goods at the border.

It seems the smugglers have already felt the “weakness” of the reformers.

And where there is weakness—things move.

All the more so under circumstances where the pressure of full warehouses, vans, and trucks from across the border has only grown in recent months. To be fair: when Mandzii’s team started, nothing was moving.

And now, having overcome fear, the border has not just begun to seep—some checkpoints like Ustyluh went full speed.

But the most interesting bow on this story is Mandzii’s proximity to Volyn.

In January 2026 the team of NABU detectives led by Orest Mandzii seized Volyn Customs’ monthly cash of 850 thousand dollars that had been accumulated for transfer “to Kyiv.” Along with the cash, and as Mandzii recounted in his interview, detectives confiscated a “comb” from the customs officers.

This is a document detailing who collects that cash and from what sources, and how it is distributed up the DMSU vertical 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 operates, how it is collected at the border, how it is distributed, and who approves it.

And I don’t know whether I should say this, but the main actors who collected the cash 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 people work in Volyn, did Mandzii’s team allow such an obvious “slap”? We’ll file that under mysteries.

But the saddest thing is that all opponents of changes and reforms at customs will now swoop down on the Ustyluh story. “Reforms failed?” they will shout at every turn.

But what is there to say in response?