In the NABU film “Carthage,” the head of the drug cartel “Khimprom,” Yehor Burkin, nicknamed “the Mexican,” discusses ho...

In the NABU film “Carthage,” the head of the drug cartel “Khimprom,” Yehor Burkin, nicknamed “the Mexican,” discusses how to corrupt the Ukrainian government, which is interfering with his drug business.

The fact is that the Cabinet regularly expands the list of prohibited narcotic and psychotropic substances. Each new ban forced “Khimprom” to change the chemical formula of its products and get rid of warehouse stocks that would become criminal evidence.

Judging by the negotiations, Burkin wanted the Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko to stop sending proposals to Health Minister Viktor Liashko about new bans.

Osipov “Kryminal” made Burkin a counterproposal: share 50% of the proceeds. Burkin was outraged: he was already paying the security forces $500 thousand monthly. In return he offered to pay a one-time $500 thousand, get a five-month reprieve, and then give a third of the income. Asked about a possible change of minister, the intermediary assured that new partners would settle those issues at the expense of their share.

Now watch closely.

The list of prohibited substances was approved by Cabinet resolution No. 770 back in 2000. Over the next 26 years the government expanded the list, and the drug business evaded the bans by changing chemical formulas.

Only on 2 October 2026 did the Cabinet adopt resolution No. 1213, changing the very principle of the bans. Previously the government banned a specific chemical formula, and drug dealers slightly altered it and continued selling virtually the same drug. Now not only individual substances but entire groups of their chemical derivatives are banned. In other words, simply replacing a few elements in the formula no longer automatically allows one to circumvent the ban.

The trick of drug dealers changing formulas has long been known abroad. In the United States as early as 1986 a law was passed allowing prosecution for the distribution of drug analogs even if their specific formula is not listed among prohibited substances. A similar system has been in effect in the European Union since 1997.

So the question to the Ukrainian government is quite concrete: why was the global standard for controlling chemical derivatives implemented only in October 2026?

A possible explanation is the NABU arrest in July of this year of Osipov (“Kryminal”), who coordinated Khimprom’s activities. His phone with the messages ended up in NABU detectives’ hands.

Bottom line: for twenty-six years the Ukrainian government chased chemical formulas while the drug cartels changed them faster than officials could rewrite the list of prohibited substances. And only after NABU obtained the cartel participants’ correspondence and opened an investigation did the Cabinet suddenly discover that the United States had figured out how to fight such schemes forty years earlier.

What a coincidence.