EAS-Obs

Illicit trade between Ukraine’s Transcarpathia and the EU

Smuggling, Inc.

...Transcarpathia, ukraine’s westernmost region, has long been a hub for cross-border smuggling, facilitated by deep-rooted corruption and its proximity to four EU countries. This report explores how the region’s economy h...

Posted on 15 Apr 2025

Drug Policy, EAS-Obs

Collateral damage: Assessing substance use in Ukraine’s military

Collateral damage:

...y a few days, causing severe withdrawal symptoms and psychological distress. Others may turn to substances simply to relax during rare moments away from the front.  The current military policy in ukraine towards drugs is one of zero tolerance. All forms of drug use – including methadone required by opioid substitution therapy (OST) who have enlisted – are punishable by loss of pay or combat sta...

Posted on 28 Mar 2025

Crime & Conflict, EAS-Obs, EUR-Obs

Future trends in arms trafficking from the Ukraine conflict

Tomorrow's fire

...Given recent announcements, the end game of the ukraine conflict may be approaching sooner than expected. The pace of negotiations may bring a rapid end to the fighting, but early indications suggest they will leave many underlying issues unresolved. What...

Posted on 18 Feb 2025

Crime & Conflict, EAS-Obs

Tomorrow’s fire: What does the future of the Ukraine conflict mean for Europe’s illicit arms market?

...In February, the war in ukraine will enter its fourth year. It is too early to tell how the conflict will unfold in 2025, both on the battlefield and at the negotiation table. However, it is not too early to consider what might occ...

Posted on 16 Jan 2025

Author(s): Brian Lee, Paddy Ginn

Crime & Conflict, EAS-Obs

A new phase of arms trafficking in Ukraine

...Recent evidence shows early signs that organized arms trafficking is on the rise in ukraine, marking a potential change from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC)’s latest report on the topic. Published in June 2024 and covering arms trafficking in 2023, the...

Posted on 23 Sep 2024

EAS-Obs, EUR-Obs

Mitigating organized crime risks among veterans in Ukraine

The hard return

...Amid ukraine's ongoing conflict, a critical issue demands attention: the lack of a strategic veterans’ policy to cope with the large numbers of Ukrainian military personnel who will demobilize at some point in ...

Posted on 18 Jul 2024

EAS-Obs

More guns, better control? The paradox of gun control in Ukraine

...en one strand of the gun control debate in the United States, where guns are sold legally in many states, and where a number of mass shootings have been attributed to the country’s lax gun laws. In ukraine, however, the public debate around gun control is almost completely reversed.    As ‘Smoke on the horizon: Trends in arms trafficking from the conflict in Ukraine’, the Global Initiative Ag...

Posted on 24 Jun 2024

Crime & Conflict, EAS-Obs

Smoke on the horizon: Trends in arms trafficking from the conflict in Ukraine

Smoke on the horizon:

...The influx of weapons to ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, added to an already large reservoir of weapons in the country (especially since the outbreak of the conflict in 2014), raised concern over the s...

Posted on 18 Jun 2024

Crime & Conflict, Global Organized Crime Index, EAS-Obs

Drugs on the front line: The war in Ukraine is fuelling drug use among soldiers, particularly of synthetic substances

...Kateryna (name changed) is 45 and lives in Kyiv. Her brother Bohdan (name changed), 37, has been fighting the Russian army on the front line in eastern ukraine for over a year. In late 2023, Kateryna received a call from a hospital in Dnipro. Her brother was in the emergency room, she was told. He was alive and relatively unharmed, but hysterical. He had ov...

Posted on 22 Jan 2024

Crime Terror Nexus, EAS-Obs

Ukraine Risk Bulletin #1

Observatory of Illicit Markets and the Conflict in Ukraine

...Risk Bulletin Download PDF Observatory of Illicit Markets and the Conflict in ukraine Issue 1 November 2023 Summary highlights Monitoring illicit arms flows from the conflict in Ukraine. The huge influx of weapons into Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022 h...

Posted on 14 Nov 2023