New dynamics, new opportunities:trends in organised crime in Ukraine after Russia’s invasion

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 reshaped the way organised crime operated within Ukraine and how it interacted with criminal interests in other countries, disrupting some forms of illicit business and generating new opportunities. This chapter will explore three key areas of change: the responses of criminal actors; the nascent illicit economy in drugs and arms trafficking at the front line, and the new trend in smuggling conscripts away from the fighting; and the changes that have occurred to illicit markets and flows in the west of Ukraine, where massive inflows of military equipment and humanitarian aid, and similarly large outward movements of refugees, have created new vulnerabilities that organised crime is attempting to exploit. This last area also discusses the risks of corruption around another imminent inflow – that of reconstruction funds.