It was near Rivne

Our people showed Europeans Hollywood

An unprecedented live show was demonstrated yesterday and the day before yesterday by our compatriots, accustomed to a stable and measured life. Last night, the Ukrainian security service confirmed that the dramatic race for three gangsters who took hostages ended bloodlessly on the outskirts of Rivne. At the same time, the operatives were not sure that the unprecedented escape through three countries, which began on Tuesday in northern Germany, would end in Ukraine - a plane had already been prepared at the Rivne airport in case the criminals demanded a flight to another country.

The story began on Tuesday evening in the town of Julzen, between Hamburg and Hannover. Three armed raiders broke into a local savings bank, demanding to call the boss and give them all the cash. According to the German police, the bandits were given a “six-figure sum” (Ukrainians say about 200 thousand euros). After which, having captured two bank employees, 39 and 25 years old, they made a dizzying tour of Germany - Poland - Ukraine in a stolen Seat Ibiza car. According to German police tactics, in such cases, absolute priority is given to the lives of the hostages - so the robbers were given the green light along the entire 1,600-kilometer route, which they managed to cover for incomplete knocks. It was for this reason that the German traffic police, not only in Germany, but also in Poland, organized something like escorting a car in which the robbers rushed east at breakneck speed, zigzagging due to obvious ignorance of the road. They crossed some settlements at a speed of 150 km/h. “We tried to ensure unhindered travel, because... The biggest fear was that the race would end in a car accident, admitted the police president of Lüneburg, whose jurisdiction includes the Julzen district, at a press conference last night. “Innocent people could have died.”

So far, at least the German police have not been able to definitively establish the identities of the criminals with sufficient certainty. The police officers involved in the operation in Julzen itself were under the impression that one of them spoke Hochdeutsch, the standard German language, while the other two spoke with what was said to be an “Eastern European accent.” Somewhat later, confusing information appeared that all three robbers had German passports, but one of them was Russian by origin, and the other two were Kurds. From Polish sources a little later it followed that the “Russian’s” companions were Moldovans. The police president of Lüneburg eventually put an end to the “national question”, saying that we were most likely talking about “three ethnic Germans - immigrants from Kazakhstan or Russia.” As stated by the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, these are German citizens born in 1975, 1977 and 1978.

Despite all the outward “precaution” of the German police towards the robbers, they adopted a tactic according to which the fugitives were under constant moral pressure from their pursuers. He ultimately led to the success of the operation, which involved the police and security services of three countries. This, as the Germans say with satisfaction, is the first baptism in the context of multilateral military interaction between different European states, which ended in complete success.

Yuri Shpakov, Berlin