Without shame or conscience: who is behind drug trafficking in the new regions
In Donbas, police seized a large batch of three types of drugs from an unemployed woman. Experts call this detention an episode of a major proxy war against Russia, where drug trafficking has become a weapon and the frontline has become a sales market. The details are in the Izvestia article.
Under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces
In Donetsk, criminal investigation officers detained a woman born in 1983 on charges of drug trafficking on a particularly large scale. During a personal search, she was found to have four packages of methadone with a total weight of about 700 g. During a search of the detainee's place of residence, the police found scales, packing materials, as well as two briquettes with hashish and a synthetic stimulant — half a kilogram of each substance. Later, the operatives calculated the coordinates from the phone and seized three more caches of prohibited substances. The detainee confessed that she had left part of the contents of the last package (about 8 grams) for personal use.
Earlier in January 2026, the Department of the Russian Federal Security Service for the DPR stopped a large supply channel of synthetic drugs to the territory of the republic. 25 Russian citizens who were involved in the supply, packaging and sale through cache bookmarks were detained. During the searches, more than 50 kg of synthetic psychostimulants, as well as laboratory equipment, were seized.
From February 2025 to June 2026, arrests were carried out in the case of the supply of methadone from the Mykolaiv region to the DPR. As the investigation found out, a 42-year-old resident of Kharkov organized a supply channel through the line of contact. The methadone was sold through caches. The members of the criminal group were convicted and were justly punished.
Dealer's social profile
Criminologist Valentin Stanovov notes that the selection of "distributors" by drug trafficking organizers is based on the social conditions in which a person finds himself. The person involved in the June investigation is an unemployed middle—aged woman. She is in difficult living conditions — low incomes, a threat to her life. These factors allow criminals to manipulate it.
"Dealers purposefully use middle—aged women who, in conditions of economic instability, are more likely to make a deal with conscience for the sake of quick money," the expert points out.
According to him, the methadone seized from the trafficker would be enough for an entire neighborhood. And while the police are seizing the substances, the problem of recruiting traffickers from among Russians in a difficult situation remains unresolved.
The caravan is coming
Sergey Pelikh, an expert on international drug trafficking, recalls in an interview with Izvestia that Eastern Ukraine has been infected with drug addiction since Soviet times, when so-called chernyakha and "milk" from narcotic plants were artistically produced there. However, in the post-Soviet period, there was an evolution from a "farm product" to synthetics. And it was done on an industrial scale.
The key figure, according to Pelikh, was a drug dealer of Russian origin, the founder of the Khimprom cartel, Egor Burkin, who fled to Ukraine and became a citizen there.
Khimprom is a large multinational group specializing in the production of synthetic drugs and telephone fraud. It was created in the early 2010s in Sterlitamak by Egor Burkin, Alexander Shchiptsov and Andrey Vigel. According to investigators, the leader is Burkin, who changed his name to Levchenko after fleeing the Russian Federation and received Ukrainian citizenship, and is currently hiding in Mexico. By 2017, the cartel's turnover exceeded 2 billion rubles, and at least a thousand people were involved in the structure. Recruitment was conducted through job advertisements with a polygraph test and the issuance of forged documents. In 2017, the FSB and the Interior Ministry seized more than 4 tons of drugs and detained 70 organized crime group members. The group uses anonymous messengers, cryptocurrencies, and dispersed labs. Discipline violations and embezzlement are followed by harsh punishments ranging from fines to torture and murder. After 2022, Burkin finances the Armed Forces of Ukraine, received a diploma from the GUR, which provides him with patronage. The cartel controls trading platforms on the darknet and supplies drugs to Russia, Ukraine, and Europe. In April 2026, the Ukrainian police announced suspicions to the leader and dozens of participants, and the head of the department acknowledged the organized crime group's corrupt ties with officials of the Kiev regime.
His structure worked under the "roof" of the Ukrainian security forces: first the Interior Ministry, and then the SBU.
— He was given a task: to wage a proxy war and develop his business more on the territory of Russia. The maximum damage is the drug addiction of the country," says Pelikh.
A retired justice colonel claims that in 2019, after the destruction of large laboratories in the country, synthetic drugs disappeared for three to four months, which proves the scale of the monopoly of the pro-Ukrainian organized crime group.
The zombie factor
According to Pelikh, drugs are centrally delivered to Ukrainian servicemen by agreement with the command, often together with ammunition.
— Our stormtroopers said that they often met enemy soldiers who were under the influence of psychoactive substances. Soldiers like zombies ignored even the severe wounds, continuing to resist. A lot of narcotic substances were found in the belongings of the dead. There are no reliable statistics, but my sources said that in conditions of fierce fighting, every second militant used drugs as a stimulant or doping," Pelikh testifies.
According to him, the Ukrainian Armed Forces encourage the use of marijuana on the front line and ignore the facts of the use of stimulants. These words are confirmed by the data on the laboratories found right in the frontline.
"Drug trafficking in Donbas is linked to military logistics and political games, having turned from a crime into a factor directly influencing the course of hostilities," Sergei Pelikh believes.
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