National Police: thief in law Petso divulges Russia’s ploy to weaken Ukraine 

Revaz Bukhnikashvili aka Petso

According to the National Police of Ukraine, the Russian siloviki have been deporting thieves in law to their country trying to "destabilize the criminal situation."

Sergey Knyazev, the Head of the Ukrainian National Police, has accused Russia of deliberate deportations of thieves in law to the country. According to him, Ukraine even coined a special term for this kind of people, a "criminal migrant". Sergey Knyazev said they had found 29 thieves in law exiled by Russian law enforcers over the last seven months alone.

Sergey Knyazev

Sergey Knyazev, Head of the National Police

A vivid example the National Police head provided was the detention of Revaz Bukhnikashvili aka Petso at the Borispol airport on August 2. As a reminder, Petso had been expelled from Russia right after the Tatarstan Supreme Court had ruled to release the thief in law from jail after he had been diagnosed with an oncological disease of stage 4. Bukhnikashvili had served only 3.5 years out of 22. Ukrainian law enforcement authorities claim that Petso used a fake passport when crossing the border. However, some sources say the document was real and it had simply become void because the thief had been stripped of Ukrainian citizenship without any notice.

According to Sergey Knyazev, Petso stated at the interrogation the following: "The Kremlin purposefully sends criminals to Ukraine."

"After the interrogation in Borispol, <...> of the thief in law "nicknamed Petso, we received a straightforward answer: they had been given a command to destabilize the criminal situation in our country," Knyazev said.

It is not easy to believe in sincerity and saneness of such statements coming from a thief in law. Petso, thief-crowned ten years ago, is unlikely to have chosen to betray one of the points of the thieves’ code and to cooperate with law enforcement.

Notably, it has not been the first time that the Ukrainian security forces have been concerned about the dominance of thieves in law in the country, thus exposing their impotence. Despite dozens of deportations a year, which the National Police proudly reports, the thieves come back over and over again. For instance, the criminals feel at ease in the Odessa region, where they have an established criminal business. It is possible that the deported criminals are able to come back to Ukraine due to corruption in the bodies.

Meanwhile, Russia deports only the thieves declared personae non gratae by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Contrary to the unfounded accusations of the National Police head, Russian siloviki send thieves in law not just to Ukraine, but also to Georgia, Turkey and other countries.



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