The Ministry of Internal Affairs proposes within 90 days after the end of the martial law to give citizens the right to declare unregistered weapons received to repel armed aggression of the Russian Federation, - Leonid Tymchenko
“In the context of war, the issue of legalization of firearms is extremely relevant in Ukrainian society. After all, the number of weapons that are in our hands today is increasing every day,” Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Leonid Tymchenko said on the air of the all-Ukrainian television marathon “United News”.
He noted that the authorities of the National Police work daily to detect illegal storage of weapons. Units of the State Border Service also detect possible facts of crossing the border with illegal weapons.
Leonid Tymchenko also commented on the draft law approved by the Cabinet of Ministers on amendments to the “Law on Ensuring the Participation of Civilians in the Defense of Ukraine” on improving the procedure for obtaining declarations of handling firearms: “In accordance with this bill, every citizen who has undeclared weapons, will have to declare such a weapon and enter it in the register of weapons. This is done in order for him to become a legal user of this unit of weapons. That is, according to this draft law, all unregistered weapons, if the caliber of such weapons according to the law allows them to be registered with a citizen of Ukraine, must be accounted for.”
Thus, since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, civilians involved in repelling and deterring Russian armed aggression, at the legislative level, have received the right to use firearms for this purpose, which are not registered in the specified order. In this regard, there was a need to streamline the rules for handling weapons, as well as to give civilians the right to declare available weapons, but without the obligation to surrender them before the end of the martial law, and within 90 days of its completion.
The Deputy Minister noted that the procedure for the declaration of firearms, as well as the rules for their carrying, storage and transportation by civilians involved in repelling and deterring armed aggression of the Russian Federation, will be determined by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and will be introduced after the adoption of the relevant changes to the law.
In addition, Leonid Tymchenko spoke about the work of another registry, which was implemented by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Register of Persons Missing Under Special Circumstances.
“This register contains more than 26,000 people who are missing. As of today, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has already issued more than 5,500 extracts from the register,” he said.
An important topic of the broadcast was also the discussion of the documentation by law enforcement officers of the war crimes of the occupiers.
“As of today, we have 87 thousand criminal proceedings for war crimes. These crimes relate to collaborative activities, forced deportation and facts of sexual violence,” Timchenko said.
He also added that in addition to crimes, the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs system record war criminals and carry out identification of occupiers: “We formed a record of more than 230 thousand identified citizens of Russia, citizens of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, as well as collaborators. And we share this information today with our international partners. I can assure that everything will be done to ensure that every occupier, every citizen of the Russian Federation who crossed the border of Ukraine with a weapon in his hands, will be punished in accordance with the current legislation.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
