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Ukrainians fear crime making a comeback

Leader of the opposition Yulia Tymoshenko gives a speech during a mass rally in the center of Kiev on Saturday. PHOTO: AFP

The moment when you hang over the nine-storey stairwell and squeeze through the broken bars is the tricky part. On the ninth floor at 23 Jakuba Kolusa Street in a grubby suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, you can climb into the attic from where a sniper shot the Russian businessman Maksim Kurochkin last week.

Kurochkin, 38, an alleged mobster known as "Mad Max" for his love of violence and cocaine, died within minutes, his chest pierced by a 7.62mm bullet. He was hit as police were escorting him out of a courthouse 200m away, where he was standing trial on charges of extortion. Just minutes before, Kurochkin had been pleading to be released on bail so that he could protect himself, claiming his life was in danger.

"I don't want to die, please let me go," he said.

The murder of Kurochkin -- an ally of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich -- has raised fears that Ukraine is slipping back to the days of the crime-ridden 1990s when such killings were common. Just over two years since the Orange Revolution brought hopes of a shining new future under President Viktor Yushchenko, corruption and contract killings appear to be making a comeback.

If you don't mind the dust and the pigeon droppings, you can crawl into the attic space to see the spot from which a marksman and his accomplice shot Kurochkin last Tuesday. Police said the two men were seen soon afterwards wearing black masks and driving away in a silver Mazda. They left behind a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights mounted on a tripod and trained on the courthouse through a 40cm square window.

To the untutored eye, it looks a near-impossible shot. Olexandr Bukhara, a former major in Kiev's anti-organized crime squad, disagreed.

"It was a professional hit," he said. "But there are plenty of people around in Ukraine to do that kind of job -- former special services agents, maybe even a sports marksman."

Detectives believe rival businessmen probably killed Kurochkin in a battle for control of the Ozerka produce market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk, but his political ties to Yanukovich were also under scrutiny.

'Early last month Kurochkin's bodyguard and two associates were found dead in a bullet-riddled Toyota Landcruiser just outside Kiev. The director of the Ozerka market was killed in December. There have been a string of other murders of businessmen in the regions in recent months. Kurochkin boasted of surviving 18 attempts on his life.

Critics of Yanukovich -- himself convicted of theft and assault as a youth -- claim the number of contract killings has risen under his government.

Yanukovich's detractors say that he has halted the clean-up of the notoriously corrupt Interior Ministry, which began after the revolution.

Yulia Timoshenko, the leader of the opposition said: "The killing of businessmen and shady suicides gives every ground to say that Ukraine has returned to the early 1990s when a majority of conflicts in business were solved with guns."

Timoshenko has accused the prime minister of paying huge bribes to lure opposition members over to his ruling coalition.
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