A Seat car carrying three armed criminals and a female hostage entered Ukraine from Poland at 12:05 on April 3 through the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border checkpoint. Earlier, the alleged wrongdoers had robbed a bank in Wellssen (Germany), Ukrayina.ru reports. German police representative Horst Kasten said that two criminals wearing masks forced two bank employees who were leaving the bank after work back into the premises. A casual female passerby who witnessed the scene called the police. Rushing to the scene, the police began talking with the criminals. Threatening to kill one of the hostages, the robbers forced the police to surrender their guns to them and let them go, Ukrayina.ru reports. Following this, the attackers, identified by the German police as a Kurd and a Russian, made the head of the bank give them all the cash on hand and fled the town taking the hostages. The German Embassy in Ukraine says the criminals walked away with about 200,000 euros.
The men changed their escape route several times, moving first in the area between Hamburg and Bremen and later in the area between Berlin and Frankfurt on the Oder on the German-Polish border. Then, threatening to kill the hostages, they crossed the border into Poland.
When the perpetrators entered Ukraine there was only one hostage in their car. The other, according to the Polish police, managed to escape during a stop at a filling station. The German Embassy in Ukraine requested the Ukrainian authorities to do everything in their power to save the life of the hostage. As the embassy press secretary Sabine StЯhr said, a permanent representative of Germany’s Interior Ministry in Kyiv is presently sited with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, maintaining online communication with the embassy. “We have requested the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to do everything to save the life of the hostage,” adding that the German consul is ready to go anywhere if there is some news, Interfax-Ukraine quotes Ms. StЯhr as saying.
A Volyn oblast MIA Department press center representative told The Day ’s correspondent Natalia MALIMON that the Yahodyn checkpoint was opened to the criminals and they entered Ukraine at 120 kilometers an hour. Incidentally, a Polish police car chasing the criminals also managed to slip into Ukraine unhindered, only to be stopped by Ukrainian colleagues near Kovel in the middle of the Volyn oblast. Throughout Volyn, the criminals were escorted by police cars, Malimon reports. The robbers lost their bearings on Karpenko-Kary Street in Lutsk at 13:30, entering an oncoming lane. After being escorted by the police out of the city, the criminals made for Rivne. Near the border between Volyn and Rivne oblasts, Rivne oblast police chief Anatoly Frantsuz (Frenchman in Ukrainian — Ed.) joined the robbers in their car. Citing Rivne city police chief Volodymyr Samoliuk, our correspondent Volodymyr Krushelnytsky reports that Mr. Frantsuz began negotiations with the criminals whom he identified as German nationals, persuading them to leave their car and finally surrender in a cafeteria in the Surpriz filling station,
This time the Ukrainian police who found themselves increasingly under fire for inefficiency have shown what they can do.
