Streetfighting Men
KYIV
— In a snowy, half-filled car park in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s fourth-largest
city, a group of masked men armed with clubs surge toward a crowd of
anti-government protesters, weapons raised. As the protesters scatter, the men
grab one straggler and hurl him to the ground, kicking his ribs and bloodying
his face. Then, they pick him up and haul him off.
The
scene, captured in a video available on YouTube, isn’t an isolated incident. In
Ukraine’s ongoing and increasingly bloody political standoff, a group of predominantly
young men known as “titushki” are roaming the streets. They wield
baseball bats and other bludgeons, using them to intimidate and attacking
demonstrators. And reportedly, they are on the Ukrainian government’s payroll,
committing violence either alongside or under the watchful gaze of the
notorious special police unit, the Berkut (“Golden Eagle”). Sometimes, rumors say,
the titushki are even acting as provocateurs for the state, posing as violent,
anti-government demonstrators to justify harsh police crackdowns. “These guys
chucked the first Molotovs, and they were paid to do this,” says Sergei
Andrivenko, a barricade guard at the euromaidan, as the protest movement is
known. “It was obvious from what they were dressed in that they did not belong
to the Maidan. It is too cold to wear such clothes living here for two months.”
The
titushki’s precise number is unknown, but estimates in the Ukrainian press
suggest there are up to 20,000. EuroMaidan SOS, an organization monitoring
attacks on demonstrators, has reported titushki ambushes in the area
surrounding protest barricades. According to Anna Neistat of Human Rights Watch,
who has been conducting research on the ground, the titushki have been linked
to attacks on at least six journalists in Kyiv. In Ukraine’s eastern cities —
such as Odessa, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk — brazen attacks by titushki are
now almost a daily occurrence. Their presence has become so dangerous that the
U.S. State Department recently issued a travel warning about the group.
Titushki
is a recent coinage, a linguistic hat-tip to Vadym Titushko, a “sportsman” who
was convicted in May 2013 of assaulting two
journalists. At his trial, it emerged that Titushko was being covertly paid to
“protect” a pro-government rally at the time of the attack. Titushko
received a three-year jail sentence; the state, however, got off scot-free.
But the
practice of the government paying civilian muscle — particularly sportsmen
like Titushko — to do its dirty work has a long history in the post-Soviet
space. Ukraine’s cult of sport originated during the
cold war from fetishism of Olympic medals and was organized through local clubs.
When the Soviet system collapsed, funding disappeared and hundreds of thousands
of muscle-bound athletes, including boxers and wrestlers, were stranded with
little to do. But they quickly found employment working as heavies in Ukraine’s burgeoning
shadow economy, controlled by the country’s organized crime.
Despite
attempts at reform following the peaceful Orange Revolution in 2004, the
entrenched, symbiotic relationship between organized crime and the state has
proved hard to dislodge. And since President Viktor Yanukovych took the reins
of the country in 2010, there has been a rapid backward slide on corruption.
Ukraine now ranks 144 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index — tied with
the Central African Republic, Iran, and Nigeria. “There is historically a
very blurred line between the state, business, and criminal elements in
Ukraine,” says John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia
program director at Amnesty International. “That there are reports of connections between titushki and
the state is extremely concerning.”
The
titushki first emerged in 2013 as a private guard and paid support group for
Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions. Titushki were recruited, often through their
sports clubs in Ukraine’s poorer eastern regions — where the Party of the
Regions has its base — and bused into Kyiv to boost the number of regime
supporters on the streets and provide security at pro-government rallies. Many
of them were reportedly paid between 150-200 UAH ($17-23) per day to stand in crowds. Extra
cash was on offer to those willing to wave a flag. (The average monthly wage in Ukraine is
around $400, according to government statistics.)
But as
the tension has escalated in Ukraine, the use of titushki has taken a more
sinister turn. Backed up by unemployed youth, the titushki have been
transformed into a
state-sponsored, street-fighting militia — an unofficial “fourth
column” of the government’s defense apparatus. In addition to attacks on
protesters and provocations of violence, the titushki are accused of being
behind a campaign of intimidation, including the torching opposition activists’
cars. Dmytro Yovdiy, the lawyer of Dmytro Bulatov — a leading euromaidan
activist who was kidnapped and brutally tortured by unknown assailants before
being released — says the titushki had been intimidating his client in the
lead-up to his disappearance. “They were hanging around outside the family
home shouting slogans,” says Yovdiy. “His car was also broken
into.”
The
upper echelons of the state have denied a connection to the titushki. But,
according to media reports, these men are not only paid by authorities, they’re
also highly organized. “Many of the low-level titushki are just criminals
and scumbags picked up off the street,” says Mykola, a former Interior
Ministry police officer, who would only be identified by his first name. “But some are more scary people,
sportsmen and former members of special law enforcement units. There is a
hierarchy.”
Mykola added, “It is not the
low-ranking police controlling this, but those high up in government, police,
and criminal structures — these are effectively the same people in Ukraine.”
An
investigative documentary aired in January on Ukrainian television
channel 1+1 shows undercover footage purportedly of titushki being paid for
their work. It also outlines how payment is determined:
“Foot-soldiers” receive lower wages than their
“commanders,” and bonuses are available to those who recruit friends.
In other amateur film footage posted online, the
titushki can be seen crossing and appearing behind police lines as government
forces clash with protesters.
It is
difficult to track down the titushki, much less get them to talk — but not
impossible. There have been claims that many of
them are camping out under state protection in Mariinsky Park, near the
presidential administration building in Kyiv. There, behind a heavy-duty cordon
of barricades and riot police, two
men identify themselves as titushki, but insist they were doing honest work:
“We are normal people, we are here to defend this park and these statues from
the [EuroMaidan] terrorists and extremists, and to protect peaceful citizens.”
The duo, however, warns us away from entering the park, lest cameras and other
possession be seized by those inside.
Misha, a 27-year-old welterweight boxer who
only provided his first name, eventually agrees to give a guided tour of the
park. Dressed head to toe in Adidas, Misha sported two gold teeth — he lost the
originals fighting, he says — and the number 13 tattooed on his neck. The park
is filled with signs of government collusion with the titushki: rows of brown,
state-provided tents and a kitchen area decked out with Soviet-era military
equipment. Most blatantly, police from Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, armed with
riot gear, are working side-by-side with the self-confessed titushki to unload
firewood from a truck.
Like
his colleagues, Misha claims that he is just there to protect the area. “I would never use
violence against peaceful protesters, only extremists. I support Yanukovych and
Party of the Regions, this is why I am here,” he says. Fifteen other
members of his boxing club in Kharkiv, a province in east Ukraine, have also
come to Kyiv. “We sportsmen are
a real community in Ukraine and Russia,” he says. “We hang together
and can all rely on each other.”
This
ideological orientation, it seems, is important in understanding the titushki: The euromaidan protests have brought into sharp focus a historical divide between
Ukraine’s pro-Europe west and pro-Russia east. With their longstanding ties to
Ukraine’s criminal enterprises and the eastern part of the country, many sports
clubs have a vested interest in maintaining the political status quo: a
pro-Russian government.
Oplot, a Kharkiv-based mixed martial arts
club with a core membership of military veterans, is an example of such a club. The club’s members have openly
advertised traveling to Kyiv to “assist” the police with their
duties. Their website even boasts of attacking euromaidan activists, including one post here
they claim an anti-government activist “cut his own ear off” in a
clash.
Some in the euromaidan are trying to find
ways to deal with the titushki, such as posting name-and-shame photographs in
the streets or capturing them to quiz them about their bosses. They’ve even
had titushki perform menial duties like chopping wood for the anti-government
camp before being let go. However, other elements in the protest movement are
less patient. In Ukraine’s eastern cities, there are reports of violent street clashes
as pro-government youths hunt down Yanukovych’s violent supporters.
These kinds of tactics only bring about more
“chaos and disorder,” says Yelena Biberman, a Brown University expert
in Eastern Europe and informal state actors. They’re also self-defeating. “The new image of the radical
protestor enables the government to use more brutal tactics to quell the protest,”
Biberman explains.
Anton, a member of the AutoMaidan patrol
that drive in convoys around the perimeter of Kyiv’s protests to protect the encampment
from titushki attacks, says the thugs represent a government up against the
wall and lashing out. Earlier this month, Anton
suffered two broken ribs following a confrontation with a group of about 30 titushki.
“I know from experience how dangerous these people can be.”
“This is our government’s solution to
the threat of sanctions from the U.S. and Europe if there is further violence
by the state,” he says. “They must find some other way to scare
people, to hurt people.”
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images