Oleg Sukhov: Reformer and anti-reformer of the week

Roman Sinitsyn

Roman Sinitsyn, a volunteer assisting the military, has helped to reshape and revive the army and expel corrupt and dishonest officials from the police.

Sinitsyn is a co-founder of the Narodny Tyl (People’s Home Front) volunteer group and an ex-member of a police vetting commission.

Last week he wrote that Viktor Rybak, chief of police in Novomoskovsk in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, owned 11 hectares of land and a separate land plot worth $50,000. He is scheduled to be vetted, and Ivan Varchenko, an advisor to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, is against firing him, Sinitsyn wrote.

He has also exposed attempts to pass through vetting controversial police officers accused of organizing pro-government thugs in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast during the EuroMaidan Revolution, and efforts by Avakov’s advisors to expel civil society members from vetting commissions in the region. Moreover, he has uncovered efforts by police officers to evade vetting there.

In June, Sinitsyn and the AutoMaidan car-based protest group said they were withdrawing from the police vetting process because Avakov and his advisors were killing the reform. They said Avakov had deprived civil society of influence over vetting commissions and was packing them with his henchmen. Avakov denies the accusations.