After the Kyiv Tragedy: Why Security Can't Keep Up with Threats

On 18 April, gunfire rang out in Kyiv's Holosiivskyi district. Seven people were killed and at least 14 wounded. Two police officers have been served notices of suspicion for fleeing the scene and leaving civilians in danger. Once again, the attack has set off a wave of debate about the reform of the National Police and how effective it really is—just as past events did in Vradiivka, Kryve Ozero, Kniazhychi, Pereiaslav and Kaharlyk. Each of those cases was followed by a surge of public outrage and promises of change. None became a turning point for the system.

ZN.UA has written before about what specifically needs to change in police training and the security system. But it isn't just a question of prescriptions. The key question is whether the system itself is capable of carrying those changes through.

After the attack, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko ordered the head of the National Police, Ivan Vyhivskyi, to launch an internal investigation into the officers' conduct and to hand over all the information to the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI). The entire chain of command of Kyiv's patrol police has also been suspended from duty. Klymenko added that response protocols and the training of law-enforcement personnel will have to be revised to take into account the risk of civilians using firearms and ammunition.

That will also mean changes to the way patrol officers are trained. Klymenko has once again backed the idea of a law on civilian firearms with mandatory training and a clear classification of different weapon types—legislation that has, in any case, been in the works for several years now as part of the EU integration process. On 27 April, the Verkhovna Rada's law-enforcement committee set up a working group on the issue, on top of one already operating within the interior ministry that has been dealing with these matters for several years. It also matters that, in the rule-of-law roadmap submitted to the European Commission, Ukraine has committed to passing the legislation by December 2026.

Meanwhile, social media and the press are racing one another to work out who should be held to account, and how: “Klymenko must resign,” “lock the officers up,” “reattest the lot of them,” “send them all to the front,” and so on. But in the conditions of a full-scale war, where domestic security depends directly on the police, prescriptions like these are superficial and will not lead to practical change. Action—both on personnel and on institutions—is undoubtedly needed.

The problem, however, is not just isolated mistakes or staffing decisions. The question is how the system itself is built. To grasp that, it's worth looking at how police reform was constructed and where it broke down.

Process for the sake of process: a brief history of police reform

The post-Soviet militsiya was indeed transformed into a Ukrainian police service after the Revolution of Dignity. But the success of the patrol police—the reform's shopfront—was at the time presented as the reform itself. In 2015, its officers were recruited from scratch through open competition, and that public-safety arm really was different from all the rest. Other militsiya officers were re-attested over 2015–16, and after the dismissal of the “Georgian team” an advisory competition was held in 2017 for the second head of the National Police. That was where the large-scale reform steps ended.

From the outset, the police had no clear development plan, and the changes were introduced in a piecemeal fashion, looking more like ad hoc firefighting than a system tied together by common goals. The transformation had more to do with the public-safety side of policing than with the criminal-investigation block. Systemic problems were left unresolved—torture, unlawful detentions, abuse of power and, conversely, helplessness, the inability to protect people from crime or to investigate it effectively. According to official figures, 7.7 percent of former militsiya officers were dismissed; half of them won reinstatement through the courts and were paid compensation. “My new police” was in reality made up largely of former militsiya officers, who brought with them an institutional memory and informal working practices that the National Police remains hostage to today.

This is not just an institutional problem—it is the new Ukrainian reality of a full-scale war. Rising social inequality, the challenges of demobilisation, post-traumatic stress disorders and a weak veterans' policy all inevitably feed into the level of violent crime. The discipline of criminology and the experience of other countries show that, once a war ends, that trend only intensifies. And that is precisely the reality the system has turned out to be unprepared for.

For all the declared aim of “depoliticising” the police—that is, reducing the minister's influence over its operational management—the National Police has remained dependent on the interior ministry in matters that are not the ministry's job. As things stand, the post of head of the National Police is entirely the interior minister's call, and the European Commission has flagged the lack of an open competition as a problem. So the position currently held by Ivan Vyhivskyi remains under the interior minister's control. What's more, the appointments of all heads of regional police bodies and their deputies are likewise approved by the minister.

The interior minister, by contrast, ought to be responsible only for shaping state policy—taking part in cabinet meetings, presenting budgetary and legislative matters—while the head of the National Police runs the police itself. In practice, every interior minister has been involved both in policy and in operational policing at the same time. The minister is a political appointee chosen by MPs. The operational work of the police needs to be insulated from political influence.

During the full-scale war, the police continue to steer clear of sensitive issues of social injustice—policing during mobilisation drives, for example. Klymenko has come out flatly against assigning such tasks to police officers, who do have the legal right to use coercion. The police are minimizing their role in the process so as not to trigger a political crisis and a fresh wave of demands that the police themselves be punished. As a result, all the reputational fallout is shouldered by the military enlistment offices.

It is striking that even in a full-scale war the police retain considerable public support—polling indicates that trust in the police hovers around 48 percent (Razumkov Centre, Rating Group). Substantial approval is also caused by the fact that almost 10 percent of police officers (according to the interior ministry) are directly involved in combat at the front, in the Liut (“Fury”) brigade, infantry units and the like; on top of that, work both in front-line areas and in the rear involves a daily risk to life.

Under the 2015 law on the National Police, the main indicator of police effectiveness is public trust in the force. To put that into effect, the cabinet adopted a resolution in 2018 under which the state would put such surveys out to tender. Until 2022, independent polling firms carried out the relevant studies, but with the introduction of martial law the tenders were suspended. Trust then was also recorded at over 40 percent. The trouble is that from year to year different polling firms can use different methodologies, making it impossible to compare results against the same yardstick. The 2018 resolution was repealed in March 2026. In its place, a new one has been adopted, under which such surveys are to cover all criminal-justice bodies. The problem of pollsters using different methodologies has not gone away.

Reform of the law-enforcement system is formally still under way—not least as part of Ukraine's EU integration commitments. Chapter 24 of the EU acquis, “Justice, Freedom and Security,” explicitly requires strengthening the institutional capacity of these bodies to fight crime, and organized crime above all.

In that light, the National Police is now planning to shift from going after one-off incidents to tackling systemic cases and organized crime. That involves building up analytical capacity, plugging the police into the criminal-policy system and rolling out the European model for assessing organized-crime threats (SOCTA), including in cybersecurity (IOCTA). Some of these EU-driven measures have been written into the first Strategy for Developing the National Police for 2026–2030. Their implementation should round off the reform of the criminal investigation block. Ukraine is now at a point where reform can finally cover what was not done in 2015–2019; under the European Commission's tough scrutiny, there is a chance of meaningful change.

Collective responsibility and a staffing crisis

It is wrong to assume that any high-profile case involving police officers must automatically lead to the leadership's resignation. That can work in established democracies with the resources and the room to practice broad representative powers—Switzerland, for instance. But not in a country in the middle of a full-scale war.

In the wake of the 18 April attack in Kyiv, responsibility for subordinates ought to rest with the leadership of the patrol police and of the National Police as a whole. But if Vyhivskyi were dismissed now, the new head of the National Police would be every bit the same kind of leader—simply because the candidate would be the interior minister's, an extension of him given how politicized the police remains. A change of name, in other words, will not mean a change of course for the agency. And that has a direct bearing on the system's ability to respond quickly and effectively to crises.

Methods of collective responsibility belong to a political logic, not a professional one. Political reprisal is not a feature of the European-style police force we want. What matters far more is what systemic steps are taken to prevent another tragedy of this kind.

At the same time, there are few people willing to lead the police at any level—if any at all. Skilled professionals are evidently not drawn by low salaries and a constant risk of being sacked not on the basis of an audit or performance review, but simply under the heading of “collective responsibility for one's subordinates.”

The scale of the problem is acknowledged by the National Police's own leadership. According to its head, the patrol police is roughly 25 percent understrength, and even more so in Kyiv. In those conditions, officers have to be drafted in repeatedly to plug the gaps, even if they don't have enough experience in response work. As Vyhivskyi conceded, one of the officers caught up in the events of 18 April had not worked regularly on shifts of that kind.

Layered on top of that is a broader staffing problem—one that affects not only the police but the whole civil service. The European Commission insists on meritocratic career progression, with open competitions for senior posts, including that of police chief. At present, those rules have been put in place for the recruitment of the heads of all law-enforcement bodies, except the head of the National Police. Removing that exemption would partly loosen the National Police's dependence on the interior minister.

Open competitions for management posts within the police are trickier because there are thousands of them, and physically organizing one is next to impossible—it would mean setting up a vast number of selection panels. The logical course is to apply the procedure not to all positions but only to the most senior posts and a few mid-ranking ones. The interior ministry, however, will agree to competitions only on condition that the posts they apply to are determined by ministerial regulation. That carries the risk that the minister limits competitive recruitment to a handful of low-impact jobs. The most balanced approach would be one in which the procedure covers the senior leadership above all—the managers whose decisions have a systemic influence on the work of the police as a whole.

So a quick fix to the staffing problem should not be expected, particularly when it comes to open competitions. The response to the attack must instead be to tighten internal controls: impartial internal investigations, and grounds for disciplining managers who fail to organise their subordinates' work properly.

The office of (not so) easy solutions: what comes next?

The problems within the police that the attack in Holosiivskyi district has cast a light on are unlikely to be resolved through a few one-off staffing and political decisions. What is needed instead is to build up the institution's capacity—through depoliticizing the management chain, effective internal oversight, updated response protocols and proper professional training. Together, these changes can strike the balance between citizens' rights, their safety and the effectiveness of law enforcement during wartime.

1. Criminal liability is individual. The “officers who fled” are the subject of criminal proceedings under part 3 of article 367 of the Criminal Code; in those proceedings the State Bureau of Investigation will examine the protocols and procedures, assess whether the elements of an offence are made out, and the prosecutor's office will then send the case to court.
2. Leadership accountability. The internal investigation should look into whether there are grounds to discipline the leadership of the police—the Kyiv patrol police, the head of the National Police and other officials who organised the response to the attack.
3. Response protocols. Protocols for terrorist attacks involving hostage-taking need to be improved. The KORD Rapid Operational Response Unit did its job, but skilled work by negotiators and special units, and their coordination with the patrol officers who arrive first on the scene, can help reduce the number of victims before the attacker is neutralised.
4. Tactical and technical training. The use of physical force, less-lethal options and firearms must be drilled constantly. The number of training hours needs to go up, particularly on practical shooting—firing in unfamiliar and extreme conditions. Carrying a weapon is not enough; officers have to be able to handle it and ready to use it on lawful and critically necessary grounds.

There is one critical issue that deserves to be flagged separately—officers' readiness to use their firearms.

5. Psychological training of officers. That is precisely what was missing on 18 April: the officers fled not just because of individual factors but because of a systemic unwillingness to act in a situation where firing a weapon inevitably brings an investigation in its wake. In our legal system, using a weapon is a problem from the outset—someone has to be punished for it. That has a huge chilling effect, which we saw at work. With each passing year, the unwritten rule of “better not fire, just in case” causes ever more damage to security and public order in a country at war. Today every use of a weapon triggers an internal investigation, but those investigations are not always objective. The case law on the lawful use of weapons by police is thin compared with the case law on civilians acting in self-defens
6. Overhauling the licensing system. A law setting clear rules on civilian firearms must finally be passed—either bill no. 5708 or a version of it reworked by the working groups mentioned above. The licensing system needs putting in order: better control over the registration and re-registration of weapons; a proper assessment of the mental state of the person being granted a permit; training for gun owners; ballistic test-firing of rifled weapons; and so on.

Some of the items above have already been announced by Klymenko. But what will count is not political statements after a high-profile tragedy—it is the law-enforcement system's capacity to translate these changes into practice. The key question, then, is whether that institutional capacity exists. And as long as the depoliticisation of the police remains a slogan rather than the rule, the limits of reform are set not by the war but by the system itself.