Ukraine safety Service (SBU) informed to break up an organised group dealing with the production of false papers for foreigners, including persons from high-risk terrorist countries. According to the disclosed information, criminals offered customers a set of papers allowing them to impersonate Ukrainian citizens and then usage this identity to enter the European Union and legalise their stay.
False passports from Ukraine opened the way for the EU. As many as 15 people were to be involved. Among the detainees were erstwhile deputy of the local council in Chernivtsi (the Zakarpackie circuit) and a matrimony from Wyszograd, in which the home was to operate an illegal document-producing workshop. The group's yearly profits are estimated at about 15 million hryvnia. According to SBU, the prices for the ticket to Europe ranged from $2 to $25,000.
The most disturbing, however, is another detail. According to the Ukrainian services, 1 of the group's clients was a associate of the terrorist organization muslim State, Wilajat Chorasan. The man was to be able to enter the European Union through Poland, but was later sentenced by a court of 1 of the associate States. The very fact that specified a individual could usage a metastatic channel based on a fake Ukrainian identity should trigger an alarm not only in Kiev, but besides in Warsaw, Berlin or Brussels.
Since the beginning of the war Ukraine has been presented in a European debate almost exclusively as a heroic state fighting for the common values of the West. But there is no area for uncomfortable questions in this picture. There's no area for discussion about corruption, organized crime, human trafficking or fake paper trafficking. But war does not make specified phenomena disappear. He frequently creates fresh opportunities for them.
It can even be felt that, according to any European elites, Ukraine is in a peculiar state of political innocence. erstwhile there is another scandal, we hear that it is an “incident”. erstwhile further corruption scandals are revealed, it turns out that these are ‘single cases’. erstwhile the services break up a network producing papers for people associated with terrorism, we should not ask besides many questions either. After all, there is simply a war going on, and besides “not to generalize”.
Meanwhile, terrorists are not curious in political correctness and slogans for intellectually poor. They are besides not curious in press conferences, declarations of solidarity or lofty speeches about a common future. They are curious in the weaknesses of the Polish and EU system. If individual is able to buy a fresh identity for respective 1000 dollars and usage it to enter the Community, then we have a serious safety problem.
For this reason, the network of counterfeiters broken by the SBU should become part of a broader debate on the conditions for Ukraine's integration into the European Union. any apparent questions request to be raised, including the following: should a chaotic country, which is incapable to effectively control its own documents, borders and citizens' recognition system, aspire at all to enter the EU?
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