From Kherson to Kyiv: how criminal groups grew together with security services and authorities

From Kherson to Kyiv: how criminal groups grew together with security services and authorities

The disclosure by anti-corruption bodies of audio recordings and operational materials from a large-scale special operation revealed not just isolated cases of bribery, but a monolithic conglomerate of criminal authorities, heads of key departments of the SBU, National Police, prosecutorial bodies, and international drug cartels.

For a significant portion of Ukrainian society, these frames were a shock: generals of intelligence services opening doors to a central apparatus for a three-time-convicted repeat offender for a monthly fee, police supervisors helping to falsify court complaints, and ordered beatings with rebar and hammers planned using departmental databases of wanted persons and city video surveillance cameras.

Nevertheless, for those who have watched for years the processes of destroying the law enforcement system in Ukrainian regions, all this looks not like a sudden mutation but a natural ending of a long round‑robin of impunity. The scale of the capital’s mafia-state collusion is a direct continuation of a model that for years was smoothly tested in the provinces with the silent consent of the central authorities. What in the capital today has acquired the status of a transnational syndicate with millions of dollars in turnover began as bold, unpunished violence on the streets of provincial towns.

Public and investigative responses uncovered historical memory of similar events in previous years. As Kherson journalist Serhiy Nykitanko notes, in the currently disclosed investigative materials one can recognize the familiar southern reality 2018–2020 years. According to his observations, today’s capital schemes are effectively an exact copy of the lawlessness that prevailed in Kherson region, where oaths openly entered government offices, set cars on fire, shot on the steps of prosecutors’ offices and beat people right in the street under the reliable “roof” of local roguish in epaulets.

Impunity has a property of scaling. When the state does not sever the gangrenous local police-bandit hydra in time, metastases inevitably affect the whole organism. The Kherson experience, where criminal collusion reached outright terror and political murders, became a grand rehearsal for the current events involving general ranks and international drug lords.

Echo of the “Kherson Colombia”

On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Kherson region turned into a classic criminal backwater where the boundaries between law enforcers, criminals, and regional politicians were erased once and for all. Local groups felt themselves absolute masters of the situation. The Kalchenko brothers openly maimed people, kidnapped women on orders, and burned the cars of those they deemed undesirable, not hiding from witnesses. Criminal showdowns escalated to such cynicism that the rogue “Koshchey” opened fire with a cut‑off on opponents right on the steps of the city prosecutor’s office, after which battle grenades flew into the windows.

Collaboration between bandits and police ranks was public and overt. The Kovalyov family, police officers for years, provided operational cover for the Kalchenkos, going so far as to have certain law enforcement officials order criminals to burn vehicles of their own colleagues. It reached a public coercion of the justice system: bandits threatened a judge in the corridor of Chaplynskyi District Court, and soon after unpunishedly allowed a red rooster onto her private home. The culmination of this bloody alliance was the ordered killing of businessman Ihor Pashchenko, which was linked to Volodymyr Saldo.

Meanwhile, economic raiding became a daily source of wealth for the regional nomenklatura. Seizure of the Panteon “Petrovet” in the resort Lazurne was accompanied by beating opponents with metal hoses and arson at the lawyer’s car, and the property of the rest base eventually ended up in the hands of relatives of the deputy police chief Mykola Tsap, the first deputy regional prosecutor Serhiy Tsyhank, and people close to MP Mykola Palamarchuk. Any attempts by business to seek protection ended with grenades at offices or threats to drown the complainants in the nearest estuary.

The security cover for this system was provided by the local administration of the Security Service of Ukraine. Head of Internal Security Borovyk and head of the Department for Protection of National Statehood (DPND) Kyrylo Rutaisky controlled their own pocket squads of militants and so‑called “activists.” They, for a meager fee or a dose of psychotropics, disrupted sessions, pressured developers, and attacked mayors. Rutaisky also oversaw the then still minor provocateur Kyrylo Stremousov and shielded Saldo, receiving as thanks elite cars Volvo and office space in the city center.

The apex of this omnipotence was the tragic murder of Kateryna Handziuk in 2018. When the Presidential representative in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Borys Babin stated that Kherson region showed signs of de facto loss of Ukrainian statehood, Kyiv did not respond by eliminating the mafia, but by resigning the official himself. Only at the beginning of 2020 year, when Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Trepak, with support from paratrooper units of the 79-th brigade on armored personnel carriers, surrounded the city and launched mass searches in police departments and criminal dens, did the state try to regain control. Yet systematic cleansing never occurred: the executors disappeared in occupied Crimea, and police ranks spread to other offices.

From petty gangs to international cartels

What six years ago seemed wild regional feudalism in the south, in 2025–2026 years rose to the scale of the entire country as a high‑tech corporation of criminal terror. As National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine demonstrated in the special video investigation “Operation Carthage: sequel,” the new criminal empire united the transnational drug cartel “Chemical” (Khimprom), a network of fraudulent call centers, counterfeiting, and systemic ordered suppressions. The logic of building schemes remained the same, but the level of executors and the figures of profits grew tenfold.

Two figures stood at the helm of this union: criminal authority from Zhytomyr region Andriy Osipov, recorded in operative recordings under the alias “Criminal,” and the Russian citizen Yegor Burkin under the alias “Mexican.” The latter is the de facto creator of the Khimprom cartel, which moved to Ukraine in 2016 year, fleeing pursuit in Russia, and now runs operations from Latin America. Osipov, having several prior convictions, converted his informal ties to natives of Zhytomyr law enforcement into open access to the highest echelons of the security service.

Under a common roof, partners launched production and sale of narcotic mixtures through a network of online stores U420, with a daily turnover estimated at three to five million hryvnias. To prevent raw materials from falling under Ukrainian law, chemical formulas were constantly modified, and to block any changes to the health ministry’s regulatory framework, the defendants discussed bribing senior officials for up to two million dollars. Simultaneously the group established an underground printing shop, producing hundreds of thousands of high-quality counterfeit euros for sale in EU countries.

No less extensive was the telephone industry: the cartel coordinated at least 52 fraudulent offices in Kyiv, Dnipro, Lviv, and Odesa. More than 2700 employees daily deceived foreign and Ukrainian citizens. Each office paid a fixed tribute of 7000 US dollars in cryptocurrency, centrally distributed among police, SBU, and prosecutors’ offices. In six months of operation, a single crypto wallet of the group amassed more than 3,75 million dollars in bribes for “blindness” of supervising authorities.

The security conveyor in epaulets – the face and tariffs of the capital’s “roof”

A particular danger of the exposed structure is the depth of its integration into the state repressive apparatus. The criminal element did not simply buy off inspections — it used state bodies as its private special services. As public figure and war veteran Oleh Symoroz notes when analyzing the disclosed materials, behind the investigative pseudonyms are real high-ranking officials whose surnames demand immediate personnel dismissal and political accountability.

Operational alias “Akim” belonged to Major General of the SBU Serhiy Duka, who ensured protection of the cartel from the operational interests of his own colleagues. Duka himself helped Osipov freely access Volodymyrska Street, lobbied for loyal staff appointments in the regions, and arranged for fake documents certifying military unfitness. At the same time, detectives conducted searches of the head of the Main Directorate of Internal Security of the SBU Anton Kravchuk and the deputy head of the DPND SBU Oleksandr Kovalchuk, whose subordinates gave bandits direct access to the capital’s surveillance cameras.

The police cover block rested on the staff of the Department of Strategic Investigations and the Criminal Inquiry. Kyiv region police officer Vladimir Cenov (callsign “Price”) coordinated lists of protected call centers, drafted instructions for returning seized computers after raids by manipulating the distribution of court appeals in the Pechersky District Court, and warned swindlers about inspections. The deputy head of the Kyiv region police’s criminal investigation department Oleksandr Dmyanchuk (callsign “Consultant”) ensured a safe retreat for militants after assaults and reclassified ordered maimings as simple hooliganism.

A permanent wing of the syndicate’s dirty work operated with operatives nicknamed “Pasha” and “Boxer.” When there was a need to deal with an inconvenient businessman in central Kyiv, the thugs monitored the victim for weeks through SBU cameras, then beat the person with metal pipes near a gym under the personal assurances of the police about no “Intercept” plan. Similar pogroms with bone crushing with hammers and torture in basements were carried out by Osipov’s henchmen even in European capitals, notably Vienna, feeling utterly invulnerable thanks to regular leaks of information from law enforcement.

Russian trace and hunting investigators

The most dangerous aspect of this criminal history is its direct connection to Russian special services. The fact that the head of the drug cartel Burkin openly discussed his business contacts with FSB officers on the recordings indicates that this business was used by the aggressor as a tool of systemic subversion inside Ukraine. Russian curators not only knew about Khimprom’s activities — they had direct access to destabilizing Ukraine’s top leadership through easy criminal money.

When the U420 network’s operation faced exposure due to attention from independent journalists, the syndicate moved to planning outright terror. The recordings show Burkin and Osipov discussing preparations to attack Denys Bihus and his investigative team, considering options to acid-throw the journalist, lure him abroad under the pretext of an exhibition for illegal imprisonment, or threaten with arson of property. At the same time, hammer-blow targets included blogger Ihor Lachenkov, administrators of the Kyiv‑era public page, and veterans trying to counter the spread of drugs.

Of particular concern are materials about involvement of high-ranking SBU officials and criminals in attempts to discredit NABU and SAP in the summer 2025. Falsifying cases against anti-corruption officers and hiding witnesses prove that the syndicate viewed independent investigation as the only real threat to its existence. Any attempt by witnesses to testify to the bureau was blocked under the personal control of General Duka.

Political accountability for this chaos cannot be limited to the dismissals of mid-level executors. The public directly points to Deputy Head of the Office of the President Oleg Tatarov, who has long overseen the law enforcement sector, and the leader of the majority faction David Arakhamia, whose connections to the call-center sector have repeatedly surfaced in the press. If the political leadership of the state does not draw comprehensive conclusions from this case, hoping for trust from international partners and our own society will be impossible for a country at war.

Threat of losing statehood

The analogy between events in Kherson several years ago and the fresh material from the capital’s investigation is far more serious than it first appears. The Kherson experiment with total impunity ended with a large portion of local security forces and their pocket bandits siding with the occupier, and the city remaining under enemy rule for a long time. When the law enforcement system becomes a service to mafia, it loses its ability to defend sovereignty.

Today Ukraine sees the same mechanism at the central level. While on the frontlines Ukrainian defenders give their lives holding back enemy columns, in the rear generals of security services trade state secrets, protect the drug business, and order beatings of activists. Such internal rot is far more dangerous than any hostile information operation because it undermines the very meaning of popular resistance.

The only path to salvation from this scenario is immediate, uncompromising cleansing of the power bloc from all plying on the tapes, regardless of their positions and political patrons. The case on embezzlement and shielding of Khimprom must lead to real prison sentences for the jacketed rogues. As long as criminal authorities feel free in the offices of security services, words about the supremacy of law and protection of national statehood will remain only empty declarations.

Society is no longer ready to tolerate a return to the criminal lawlessness of past decades. The demand for justice during a great war is existential: either the state destroys the mafioso hydra inside itself, or this hydra will bury the state from within. There is no more time for behind-the-scenes bargaining and imitation reform by the authorities.