Ukraine’s business police, known as the Bureau of Economic Security, searched and confiscated products from e-cigarette sellers in 12 regions, including Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, and Zakarpattia, Pavlo Buzdyhan, the bureau’s deputy director, told the Kyiv Independent.
One would think this is the absolute lowest possible priority.
You do realize, despite them being at war, the nation still operates. There are still citizens, consumers, and trade. It’s not like every sector of government is all-consumed by war and ignores all of their other operations and services.
Given both operational losses and total cost, one would think they would spend their extremely limited resources enforcing things other than minor laws that are effectively victimless.
I’m not saying the entire country should have a war time economy and focus on winning their dispute, but I am saying their opponent is doing that and I’d rather not suffer the effects of Russia winning because Ukraine is spending what would be massive resources investigating and enforcing victimless crimes across most regions in the country.
The core of this is anti money laundering and that, in many cases, is not victimless. You also point out that they have limited resources, but try to roll into an argument about how trying to preserve those resources is pointless?
Also, law enforcement isn’t exactly a “massive resource” spend when the cost of that should already be baked into yearly country expenses. The only real expenditure is time for investigation. If this really is tied into luxury construction money laundering, we could he talking about hundreds of millions of dollars saved or recovered by only paying the salaries of a few law enforcement officers that will need to work anyway.
I’m not sure Ukrainian authorities know what money laundering is if they think a commodity business could be doing money laundering.
I don’t think you know how nicotine/tobacco products are used for money laundering. Just Google it.
You seem hell bent on trying to prove these are pointless raids. Maybe they are, but your arguments are just bad.
Watch “Ozark” if you have access to netflix or can yo-ho-ho it, its an excellent FICTIONAL series that provides a lot of NON-FICTION information about money laundering.
Theybhave a 3:1 kill ratio and have stalled the “second best military in the world”. Things look quite good for Ukraine rn
Also this brings in taxes which helps both the war effort and society.
Absolutely not and expecting a government to only focus on one thing at a time is ridiculous. It isnt Zelensky knocking into all te shops.
tax money is important, would be the priority they saw here.
a shadow economy is also a breeding ground for corruption.
This would lower tax revenue as an average, as demand would be lowered massively for the product (why risk being in a raid even in a ‘legit’ shop you can’t know is actually legit; also price naturally increases with both taxes and the seizure of product reducing supply) and the resources spent investigating pointless things like this are resources that can’t be spent on, you know, murder and looting which is common in war-torn countries. Even white ones.
I disagree with your entire premise that raids have anything to do with demand on an addictive product.
See all illegal substances, and their demand across the board - so much demand that people risk fines and imprisonment to deliver these items.
I honestly don’t understand how you can purport to know the cost-benefit ratio of police salaries, nicotine vape sales, and the tax revenue they generate; it seems like you’re talking out of your hind quarters.
As an Ukrainian, I can confirm that the moment the war started we stopped worrying about everything else and the only thing we think about now is the war because there is nothing else happening
I bet they’re searching for conscripts in there.
No, they aren’t. OP even copied the summary for you.
Folks from there telling that busification is ongoing. Anytime, anywhere.
Again, I think you missed a few words in the article. It’s an article about black market nicotine and the issues most countries have with controlling substances that are regulated.
Careful online though! With your interpretation of this news article, it seems you might easily be swayed by heavily biased or misleading information sources. Here is a good explainer of how to spot such things: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20250227STO27081/spotting-disinformation-six-tactics-used-to-fool-us
