The issue of the right of Ukrainians to own weapons for their own defense should be resolved after taking into account all the weapons that they now have – to think through everything step by step to avoid complicating the crime situation, said the head of the National Police Igor Klymenko.
In an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine, commenting on the results of the survey, which showed the demand of Ukrainians for possession of weapons to protect themselves and their families, Klymenko emphasized the need to “separate military operations and peaceful life.”
“When the full-scale war of the Russian Federation in Ukraine began, the right, in my opinion, decision was made to arm our citizens. This made it possible to stop the enemy and be in relative safety for those who were at some distance from the line of military clashes,” the head said. National Police.
At the same time, he added that Ukrainians are returning to the de-occupied territories, the country is trying to return to peaceful life.
“Since the beginning of hostilities, only criminal investigation officers have seized more than a thousand firearms, more than 100 grenade launchers and 350 thousand ammunition from illegal circulation. Thousands of weapons in their hands can pose a threat to the lives of peaceful and law-abiding citizens,” the head of the National Police stressed.
“So, everything must first be returned to the warehouses, taken into account or blown up, as explosive experts do, and then we return to the issue of weapons possession. That is, first of all, we must take into account all the weapons that our citizens currently have” , – expressed the opinion of Klimenko.
According to him, the police in the first days of the invasion issued about 18 thousand weapons, they were taken into account, and the military also took into account the weapons they issued. “But there are a lot of captured weapons, of unknown origin, ammunition,” the head of the National Police added.
Klymenko also pointed out that the criminal world, which “quieted a little” at the beginning of the war, will be active again, and crime will rise to the level of peacetime.
He summed up: “Therefore, there should be a step by step: first, a register to understand how many weapons are on hand, who has them. And only after that we can talk about what weapons, what caliber and what class should be in the hands of our citizens – be it a machine gun, a carbine or a pistol.”
