Ilya Kiva
"Stand still and God will help you. Nothing more, nothing less," says Ilya Kiva, head of the Department for Combating Drug Crime.
Over the past year and a half, Kiva, who began his career in the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a battalion commander in the Poltavshchyna battalion, has managed to change roles and epaulettes several times.
Ukrainska Pravda first encountered the little-known battalion commander in October 2014, when his battalion was stationed in Sector M (Mariupol-UP). Even then, his soldiers clashed with the battalion commander, leading to the battalion's later disbandment.
Nevertheless, after the scandal, Ilya Kiva was appointed deputy head of the Donetsk Oblast Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to him, he evacuated civilians from Debaltseve, fought drug trafficking in the Donetsk Oblast, and organized security at the beginning of the food blockade in Chonhar, already as deputy head of the Kherson Oblast Ministry of Internal Affairs. And when unknown assailants blew up a power line on the Crimean border, it was Kiva who led those who attempted to storm the protesters.
An even more unexpected turn occurred in his career in October 2015.
Then, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov appointed Ilya Kiva as head of the National Police's Department for Combating Drug Crime.
In his new position, Kiva initiated a search of the Kyiv club Closer, a well-known hangout for electronic music and jazz enthusiasts. In January, the Podolsk District Court ordered the club closed for three months. Kiva reported the news on his Facebook page, but he soon deleted the post.
Wherever Ilya Kiva appears, it is almost always accompanied by a loud scandal and misunderstandings.
He doesn't mince words, but, as they say, speaks the truth.
Just recently, on air at Hromadske, he stated that he allows for the punishment of criminals outside of court.
Ukrainska Pravda tried to understand who Kiva is, how long he will last in his new position, and what else can be expected from him.
Avakov frequently appoints Kiva to various positions. One explanation is that the bench is too short.
An ambiguous past
In his native Poltava, rumors abound about Kiva. Some believe he's connected to the Poltava criminal underworld and call him a "fixer" from the 90s. Others, speaking to UP, describe him as a devout patriot and champion of a healthy lifestyle.
In October 2014, Kiva told a journalist from Ukrainska Pravda that he didn’t become a battalion commander for nothing.
Before the war, he developed his command skills by rehabilitating teenagers who had been through penal colonies.
Ilya Kiva headed the foundation for the protection of the rights of prisoners "Liberation" and was also the president of the All-Ukrainian National Federation of Yard Sports.
It is known that Kiva participated in the Maidan. From February to May 2014, he led the eastern wing of the Right Sector and even served as Dmytro Yarosh's confidant during the presidential elections. Along with the Right Sector, Ilya Kiva served in the ATO zone during the first few months of Russian aggression. However, Right Sector fighters contacted by UP for comment on the Poltava resident's achievements declined to comment.
Ilya Kiva says he approached Minister Avakov himself with the idea of organizing a volunteer battalion. In early summer 2014, Kiva was establishing the "Mirnyi" company in Poltava. Arsen Avakov, who was directly involved in the creation of the "Azov" battalion from radical youth, apparently decided that the energetic "Right Sector" member Kiva, like Biletsky, could unite the Poltava volunteers.
In September 2014, the Minister of Internal Affairs signed an order appointing Kiva to the post of battalion commander of the Poltava battalion of the UMVD, which included the Poltava battalion, the Kremenchuk company, and the Mirny company.
But from the very first days, a standoff erupted between the battalion commander and a unit of the Poltavshchyna Battalion. The Ministry of Internal Affairs officers were outraged by the battalion commander's history of legal troubles and his lack of any military rank or experience.
At the same time, the fact of a criminal record came to light.
It turned out that while serving as deputy head of the Poltava Regional Department for Consumer Protection in 2011, Kiva extorted a bribe from local entrepreneurs, asking for a $1,5 fine reduction. The businessmen then filed a police report accusing Kiva of extortion.
In 2013, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Poltava finally issued a decision on the case, finding Kiva guilty under Article 368 of the Criminal Code, "Receiving a bribe by an official on an especially large scale."
Perhaps because the amount of the bribe was small, his punishment was only a fine of 600 non-taxable minimums and a one-year ban on holding positions of responsibility.
Later, advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko explained the sentence by saying that "during the Yanukovych regime, patriots were persecuted in this way."
"You won't find my criminal record in the registry," Kiva commented. This is true. In August 2014, Ilya Kiva was urgently amnestied, effectively "wiping clean" his official biography.
But things never worked out for Kiva with the Poltavshchyna Battalion. After an unsuccessful attempt at a merger, the battalion was disbanded.
"Half the battalion was made up of former cops who'd come there just to sit out the checkpoints. They knew I'd be sent to the toughest part. I told them right away, 'We're going to war to die,'" is how Ilya Kiva explained his failure.
Debaltseve and Kiva's other exploits
People's Deputy Oksana Korchinskaya (wife of Dmitry Korchinsky, founder of the infamous "Brotherhood" and the "Saint Mary" battalion, which has a controversial reputation in the ATO zone – UP) asserts that Kiva is a true hero and has never left the front lines in the ATO zone.
"Yes, he's a simple guy. Yes, he can't speak, but he's brave," she says.
According to her, it was thanks to Kiva that the evacuation of civilians to Debaltseve was organized. The high-ranking police officer himself stated in a recent interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda that he evacuated 1,500 civilians from Debaltseve, for which he received the rank of lieutenant colonel.
He was indeed in Debaltseve from the beginning of January to mid-February 2015.
However, the fact of the evacuation of the civilian population raises doubts among many volunteers.
"To evacuate people, we assembled buses from factories and businesses. Many were evacuated by volunteers. Emergency Ministry personnel were also present. We didn't see any police there. And we certainly would have known if they had evacuated 1,500 people," says Yuriy Shcherbatenko, a former advisor to former Donetsk Oblast Governor Kikhtenko, commenting on Kiva's statement.
Volunteers Natalia Voronkova and Diana Makarova, who evacuated people from Debaltseve and the surrounding area during those days, agree with this opinion.
Artemovsk volunteers, who also evacuated people from Debaltseve and Uglegorsk, laugh nervously when Kiva's name is mentioned, claiming that the lieutenant colonel tends to exaggerate his achievements.
Kiva himself responds to this: "Look at my Facebook, there are tons of photos from Debaltseve. And there are videos online. So, just search for 'Kiva. Debaltseve.'"
Volunteer Diana Makarova, recalling those days, says, "You know, there was no time for taking photos. I don't have a single photo."
According to her, she was the first to voice the figure of one and a half thousand civilians who were evacuated by volunteers in those days.
One of Ilya Kiva's heroic deeds is considered to be the withdrawal of the Svityaz Battalion from near Vuhlehirsk, then commanded by Oleksandr Fatsevich. He is now the deputy head of the National Police. His battalion was trapped in a boarding school building. Ilya Kiva coordinated the battalion's withdrawal. This actually happened. And Fatsevich himself admits that Kiva saved his life.
Why was Kiva transferred from the Donetsk region at the end of July 2015?
To this question, those close to Minister Avakov respond as follows: “Abroskin (the head of the Donetsk region Ministry of Internal Affairs) and Kiva didn’t work well together; they are both ambitious and love to be the center of attention.”
In a comment to UP, Kiva himself explains this by saying that he was fighting smuggling schemes in the Donetsk region, which his patron Abroskin protected: “From December to January, he blocked the flow of coal transport; trucks were transporting anthracite to territory under our control.”
People close to Georgiy Tuka, the current governor of the Luhansk region, on the contrary, claim that it was Kiva who tried to "resolve" the smuggling issues.
"We were stationed at the Bugasy checkpoint and detained two trucks carrying contraband in January 2015. Kyiva immediately called, and MP Dmytro Lubinets arrived to reclaim the trucks. To avoid conflict, we called in the Kyiv-2 Battalion and the SBU," explains the leadership of the 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade.
Kiva was sent from Donetsk to Kherson.
Why was Kiva sent to the Kherson Oblast Ministry of Internal Affairs?
“I was tasked with forming a second line of defense near Kherson; I set up mobile checkpoints,” he comments.
In September, when activists from the "Civil Blockade of Crimea" had just blocked food trucks from entering the peninsula, Kiva was responsible for security and was very supportive of the protesters.
"In reality, his goal was to yell at the camera, to get some publicity. Then he thought he'd get control of the trucks, but there were some principled guys there who quickly explained to him that this wasn't the ATO zone," comments one of the participants in the Crimean blockade.
Kiva in Crimea during the siege
In November, when the energy blockade began and unknown individuals blew up power lines, Ilya Kiva, now head of the department for combating drug crime, stormed protesters in Chaplynka with the Kherson battalion.
"This was an attempt to organize repairs to the power lines, but the Crimean Tatars wouldn't allow it. The assault began, and journalists supported us. Then Kiva declared that he needed to ground the supports. But the National Police hadn't given him such an order. If he'd been tasked with organizing security, he would have immediately warned us of the purpose of his visit," explains Lenur Islyamov, one of the blockade's organizers.
A little later, the head of the National Police, Khatia Dekonoidze, apologized to Lenur Islyamov for Kiva’s behavior.
War on Drugs
In October 2015, even before the law on the National Police was adopted, Avakov appointed Ilya Kiva as head of the Department for Combating Drug Crime.
Why Kivu?
According to one theory, the newly appointed lieutenant colonel's career advancement is due to the fact that Minister Avakov simply has a short bench of substitutes.
According to another version, voiced in an informal conversation by people close to Arsen Avakov, the minister understood that Kiva was unlikely to pass the recertification, and therefore he was appointed to disband the BNON unit, the dismantling of which Avakov announced on his Facebook page.
The idea was to fire 90% of the staff, and transfer those who passed recertification and polygraph testing to other departments. The new agency, the Bureau for Combating Drug-Related Crime, would be staffed from scratch. Its regional staff would report directly to the Bureau's leadership, not to the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Ilya Kiva took up his duties loudly.
First, he was implicated in the blockade of Crimea. Second, he made a number of questionable statements, such as proposing to reinstate penalties for drug use.
"Such statements demonstrate his absolute ignorance of drug policy and contradict the national strategy approved by the government. Fortunately, his rhetoric later changed, but the impression of his incompetence and unprofessionalism is colossal," comments Pavlo Skala, program director for the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine.
What most upsets Pavel Skala, who himself worked in law enforcement for a long time, is how Kiva replaces the real fight against the drug mafia with a fight against small-time dealers.
At the same time, he posts photos on Facebook, calling them criminals and drug dealers before the court decision, which contradicts the presumption of innocence.
In December, department operatives conducted a special operation at the Closer club, during which physical force was used against some patrons.
Drugs were indeed seized from the patrons during their arrest: 100 grams of marijuana, 50 grams of amphetamine, 90 ecstasy pills, and six drug-using devices. This was enough for Ilya Kiva to label the club a den. The Podolsk court ordered the club closed for three months.
"We still haven't seen the materials. To call a club a den, you have to prove a connection to drug sales. But the search report only states that such a search was conducted, and that something was seized from the floor and from patrons. What does the club have to do with this?" asks the club's lawyer, Ksenia Prokonova, calmly.
"It's just a circus. If the goal was to prove the club owners' connection to the drug mafia, then it would have been logical to conduct a special operation to detain the suppliers," comments an employee of the Drug Enforcement Department, who agreed to a meeting with the UP.
He described the new leadership as follows: "Kiva doesn't have its own team, only grandiose statements. The current task is to demonstrate its activities. Why did they introduce Kiva to us? Our opinion is that Kiva is a tool for Avakov to extort bribes from club owners. And next will be pharmaceutical companies involved in the production and sale of drugs containing psychotropic substances. The information field for this is already being prepared. Kiva posts photo reports of raids on pharmacies on its Facebook page."
Pavel Skala believes that Kiva's aggressive campaign could lead Ukraine to turn away from European drug policy and toward repressive approaches.
"What he should have declared war on was the drug corruption that is still present in BNON," Skala fumes.
A drug policy expert hopes Kiva won't stay long in the drug enforcement department.
Volunteers from the National Police Commission also say Ilya Kiva is unlikely to pass the recertification process. He hasn't yet passed it, due to illness, he says.
"Kiva is everywhere, promoting himself. He looks like a monster, but hasn't fully demonstrated his results anywhere. Kiva's bubble will burst soon," claims a source close to National Police Chief Khatia Dekanoidze.
Only Minister Avakov's strong-willed decision can keep Kiva in the National Police.
But then the question “Why do you still need Kiva?” will sound increasingly louder.
Kiva, however, has decided on his life strategy: stand firm and God will help you. Nothing more, nothing less.
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