The post-Soviet mafia wove a spider's web of dirty money around the world. Where better to attack it than to start with the Ukrainian criminal heavyweights - the 'family' and its closest circle?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Of course the biggest mafia in Russia has always been the government; in Soviet times, the Communist Party, and now a circle of former KGB and FSB.
The Yanukovych regime is a mafia, which regularly threatens, imprisons, murders, or disappears political opponents as well as those whose possessions it covets.
There is no single field of activity, not a single institution, free of the most brutal sort of corruption. Russia has bred a world-class mafia.
The old bastions of the post-communist regime collapsed before my very eyes. The monsters who had kept Ukraine in a criminal state left the stage.
The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence... sort of like the Post Office with tanks.
Wherever there's opportunity, the mafia will be there.
The Ukraine has a long history of either being part of the Soviet Union or within that sphere.
The best defence against mafia business is full declaration of assets and incomes.
If our interests - our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians - have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia, for example, I do not see any other way but to respond in accordance with international law.
Mafia guys are all just insecure people who want their money. They're like little seven-year old kids when they don't get their way. I knew guys like that growing up in New Jersey.
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