National Police of Ukraine

History

Prior to 3 July 2015, law enforcement in Ukraine was carried out directly by the Ministry of Internal Affairs as the militsiya. Plans to reform the Ministry, which was widely known to be corrupt, had been advocated by various governments and parties, but these plans were never realised.

In the aftermath of the 2013–2014 Euromaidan movement and subsequent revolution, the need for reform was acknowledged by all parties. Parliamentary elections were held in October 2014, after which all five of the parties that formed the governing coalition pledged to reform the ministry and create a new national police service.

As part of the reforms, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, presented plans to reduce the number of police officers in Ukraine to 160,000 by the end of 2015. The reform plans started with the combination of the ministry's current State Auto Inspection (DAI) and the patrol service in the country's capital Kiev in summer 2015. This new police patrol received funding from various countries. 2,000 new policemen and women, picked from 33,000 applicants, were recruited to initiate the new service in Kiev. Officers were American-trained.

Upon the launch of Kiev's new patrol police on 4 July 2015, the militsiya ceased all patrolling but continued working at precincts and administrative offices. After that the new police patrol was rolled out across Ukraine. The organisation was formally established as the National Police on 2 September 2015. By late September 2015, 2,000 new constables were on duty in Kiev, 800 were on duty in Kharkiv and 1,700 were on duty in the cities of Odessa and Lviv. At this point, the militsiya was 152,000 officers strong, and continued to handle most policing across Ukraine. The basic salary of the new police force (almost $400 a month) is about three times as much the basic salary of the former militsiya; an attempt to decrease corruption.

The new National Police officially replaced the old militsiya on 7 November 2015. On that day, the remaining militsiya were labelled "temporarily acting" members of the National Police. The change allowed for them to become members of the National Police after "integrity checks", but they were only eligible if they met the age criteria and went through retraining. This transition period ended on 20 October 2016. In this transition period 26% of police commanders were dismissed and 4,400 policemen and policewomen demoted and the same number of people promoted.

Structure and branches

The National Police is divided into a number of different services. Each municipal force has internal subdivisions. This leaves the police service with a large number of specialised branches which can more specifically target certain types of crime and apply more expert knowledge in the investigation of cases relating to their area of policing. In addition to these specific groups, all police forces retain a majority of officers for the purpose of patrol duty and general law enforcement.

The Police contains the following subdivisions:

In addition, the following special units exist:

Equipment

Officers wear a camera that is constantly monitoring their performances. The resulting videos are posted on social media and broadcast on a reality TV show.

Terminology

According to Professor Oleksandr Ponomariv of the Kiev University's Institute of Journalism, the correct Ukrainian language term for a police officer is 'politsiyant' (поліціянт). This is in contrast to the term 'politseysky' (поліцейський), a loan word from the Russian language, commonly used to refer to an officer of the National Police.

Ranks are rarely used by the public when addressing police officers in Ukraine; it is more common to hear the term Pan (Пан) (female - Pani (Пані) - Ukrainian for mister/miss - used to refer to police officers. Qualifying terms such as 'ofitser' (офіцер) or 'politseysky' (поліцейський) may also be used in conjunction with these forms of address.