This will be interesting to watch
Ukraine's has pervasive top-to-bottom corruption. This is something that does not change regardless of which gang is in charge - Kutchma, PM*LF, Russian Marionnettes, USA Marionettes - they are all the same as far as "anything and anyone can be bought" is concerned.
This has resulted in most of Eastern European cyber (and conventional) crime (including a lot of the Russian syndicates) relocating their operations there. As recently as 3-5 years ago most of Eu electronic and card fraud ran through Romania and Bulgaria. Found an ATM skimmer on your street cash machine? It was nearly guaranteed to be of made in Balkans (TM). Some of them were technoglogical gems too - remote operation via bluetooth, authentic full fascia to fit on top of a standard NCR so it does not look out of place, etc. Well - not any more - a lot of that has moved to Ukraine. The same is happening with Russia - as more and more of the black market goes legit and needs legit and working banking services, the syndicates try to move to more permissive neighbouring countries. Add to that the remnants (a lot of it is in the USA now) of the traditional mob fostered by decades of special restrictions on minorities access to professional career and education introduced by Stalin (the so called Odessa mob) and you have a very interesting picture.
IMHO, this makes the Eu association idea particularly interesting. Is the Eu ready to associate itself with that and how it will deal with that. I am not sure they are aware of the can of worms they just opened. They cried wolf for 10 years about Bulgaria being run by the mob. Well... Compared to Ukraine, most Bulgarian mobsters are bunch of "Chavdarcheta" (the BG socialist equivalent of a boyscout).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
