5 facts about the photo of the border guards on the background of a dead bear

1. According to the law, we cannot talk about someone’s guilt until such a decision has been made by a court or a marital investigation has been conducted. But the satisfied facial expressions and the finger on the trigger speak eloquently about the attitude of people with weapons to the bear (of which there are at most a few hundred left in Ukraine) – as to prey. Let’s emphasize – we are talking about armed people who have virtually unlimited power over a part of nature conservation territories located on the state border. “Behavioral physiognomy” as a method of the science of human psychology makes it possible to understand a person’s personality type with the help of the analysis of external features of the face and its expression. In the photo, we see the undisguised male bravado of hunters, not border guards, who accidentally discovered the fact of a criminal violation of the law on the border section they guard. However, we will follow the official and criminal investigation.

2. This event happened on the border of the trilateral (one located within three countries) international biosphere reserve “Eastern Carpathians”. This is a shame for Ukraine in front of its neighbors – Poland and Slovakia and the international community. It is proof that we are once again unable to protect common natural values. The war set us back 20-30 years in nature conservation.

3. The territories of the nature reserve exclusively under the control of the border guards risk turning into private hunting grounds for the chosen ones, where there are no rules. This is not about the border with Belarus and Russia, but exclusively about the border with the EU. The problem with access to nature conservation areas located on the border existed long before the war. Access to the border with EU countries, from which we, as a country going to the EU, do not need to defend ourselves, was limited even for employees of nature conservation facilities. That is, the territory formally belonged to the national park and the state recognized its high value. But the State Park Service mostly does not have access to control these areas either for poaching, illegal logging or other crimes. And if earlier it was a legal conflict, where there were two owners of the same territory, and the park could theoretically try to pressure the border guards and gain access to its own territory, then today it is proposed to legally consolidate this state of affairs and hand over 2 kilometers of border territories exclusively under the control of border guards. In particular, this will also apply to the border with the EU. If there will be such innovations