Calls grow for dismissal of Avakov
A 26-year-old woman was brought to a police station in the central Ukrainian town of Kaharlyk, where officers told her she would be questioned as a witness to an alleged theft. But according to the State Bureau of Investigation, two policemen covered her face with a gas mask and handcuffed her, fired a gun over her head and then raped her several times on the night of May 23. A week later and just 90 kilometers north, in a residential suburb of Kyiv, some 100 gunmen from two rival criminal gangs engaged in a shoot-out in broad daylight. The melee, a video of which went viral, left several people wounded and spawned comparisons to the anarchic, hyper-violent video game “Grand Theft Auto” on social media. The incidents highlight what critics of Ukraine’s formidable internal affairs minister, Arsen Avakov, say is his failure to reform the police and bring law and order to the country.