They protect smuggling and rob people: a new criminal group is gaining strength in Transcarpathia
In the Transcarpathian region, three former bandits, at the height of the full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, formed a criminal group that is “crushing” the entire criminal world of the region, engaged in raiding, smuggling and protecting call centers that rob the local population through fraudulent methods.
As noted, the group included one of the most famous criminal authorities in Transcarpathia in the 90s, Evgeniy Ignatkin, also known as “Zhenya Donetsky” or “Palych”. Until 1998, he was engaged in the import of alcoholic beverages from EU countries to Ukraine and the Russian Federation, and committed several daring murders, for the last of which - the murder of the deputy of the Transcarpathian Regional Council Mykhailo Tokar - he served 15 years in prison.
Together with him, the group also includes Vasily Sobchuk, whose name in the criminal world is “Vasya Krymsky,” and Irakli Chanturia, known as a crime boss and relative of thief in law Lasha Dzhachvliani (“Lasha Svan”).
“In the 90s, Vasya Krymsky was one of the main members of the group of “Europeans” in the city of Priluki, Chernihiv region, and was the “watcher” of this city from the criminal authority Valery Dubil. Today, Vasily Sobchuk is wanted by the police of occupied Feodosia for his activities in Crimea,” the publication says.
Today they are engaged in “protection” of CALL centers in Mukachevo, Uzhgorod and other cities, demand non-existent debts from entrepreneurs, engage in illegal logging and export of forests, control the smuggling of cigarettes to the European Union and drug trafficking from the EU to Ukraine, including to the war zone .
In addition, this trio illegally earns money from the war, namely by exporting men of military age abroad. But those who have registered to leave Ukraine then become victims of Ignatkin-Sobchuk-Chanturia, because after sending the “deviators” out of the country, with the help of “black notaries,” they re-register their apartments to themselves or their people. Bandits also forge documents in an attempt to take away businesses or land plots from local entrepreneurs.
“Transcarpathian bandits do not hide that they are waiting for the arrival of the so-called “Russian world.” Evgeny Ignatkin has Russian roots (born in the Lipetsk region of the Russian Federation - ed.) and close ties since the 90s. And, as you know, the Russian criminal world happily supported the Russian dictator in the war against Ukraine,” the publication writes.
This criminal group has recently become so strong that, in fact, today it “holds” the entire Transcarpathian region under it, spitting on laws and receiving almost no resistance from the authorities and law enforcement agencies, journalists note.
