Summer time I'm here in Maidan the main square in Kyiv the capital of Ukraine and just seven years
ago this place was the site of a revolution I was here for it actually and it definitely
didn't feel like the safest place in Europe to come to or to live back in early 2014 late 2013
but now we are getting into the summer in 2021 so in today's Tip Thursday with me Conor Clyne I'm going
to be answering whether it is safe relatively safe to live in Ukraine in 2021 Поехали!
So I'm going to start with petty crime so we're going to say like non-violent crime you know where
people scam you out of money or they rob you steal your phone steal your cash something dishonest
like that now here in Ukraine petty crime has been on the decrease over the last five years so
it's been dropping still overall it's not you know if you compare it to Western Europe it's
a bit higher here but you know my perception my clients' perception my friends' perception is
and local people is that in the city centers it's not a major issue and I definitely feel a lot
safer here than say when I'm in Ireland or if I'm in the UK or in Brussels where where I lived for
a good number of years I mean these things can happen anywhere so I think if you're taking normal
precautions then you should be good to go on the petty crime like being pickpocketed and stuff
that's not a major issue here in city centers in Ukraine unlike a lot of big tourist cities in
Western Europe you have a lot of pickpocketing going on there is a bit of a difference when I
look at the statistics in terms of petty crime or crime in general geographically in Ukraine now in
the south and east of the country the crime rates are considerably higher than say in the center
and the west in particular so basically crimes tends to decrease the further west you go in
Ukraine so if you're over in Lviv crime is a lot lower than it's going to be say historically in
Odesa or maybe here in Kharkiv or in Dnipro so the big but in this video about petty crime is
and if you're a regular viewer of my channel you know what I'm going to talk about next the biggest
danger in terms of petty crime so like non-violent crime is romance scams massive absolute huge
industry I would say here in Ukraine - what I wasn't aware of was how sophisticated this new type of
scam was I wouldn't say it was she and with how they managed to hook me in - it's a little bit of
an update because I'm making this video in June 2021 there is a new variation I guess on the scam
taking place in Kyiv at the moment because 2 of the guys who were on my high level consultation group
Slavic Utopia Secrets: Ukraine they've told me about it because they've encountered attempts on it
in Kyiv in the last couple of weeks actually one of the main scams is the restaurant nightclub
scam where basically you're lured by a woman into a particular restaurant and stuff and
basically they have an agreement with the restaurant they're getting a big cut of that check and they
rack up an enormous bill and if you try to leave then some burly bouncer comes along and says oh
you have to pay the bill even though this wasn't a genuine date or anything like that the new one
doing the new variation on it is to meet you on a dating app and then say hey let's go to this
place and then they make it very weird about the address it's kind of a residential address they
want you to meet them there one of my one of my friends actually told me as well about it that
uh he actually happened to live next door to the address it's like well we can just meet downstairs
and the girl got very fishy about it wanted to meet in person and then basically it transpired
she started asking for his photos because like it's on the app why do you need to need a photo
of me and the he started to suspect it wasn't the same girl as actually the photo on the app or even the same
person so basically it seems like they kind of outsource from the app the person you're thinking
you're going to meet to a different woman who shows up and then he was brought to a very dodgy
no I wouldn't say dodgy it was more like it was just like a very low level kind of bar
said you had to go underground it was kind of like an apartment that they kind of tried to
convert into a restaurant very very sketchy very low level and of course racked up a huge bill if
they're giving you just a residential address and it's not the person in the photo who shows up there to
meet you and then you've been brought in somewhere looks pretty dingy abandoned ship leave just go
- My friends were in Zanzibar and they grew in Tanzania maybe you know? - yeah - they're traveling to
see like wild animals but actually I'm a little bit afraid of ... - I was also look
before I came to Ukraine I was afraid to come to Ukraine - Ukraine - yeah they was very dangerous
they would kill me they would take everything I said oh my god what is this ...
- So it was interesting to hear that you thought Ukraine was scary - Yeah, really - You look afraid!
- It was my mistake my friends they warned me do not go to Ukraine it can be very dangerous there
But I said no risk no fun I travel to Ukraine and everything is great and everything is very
very beautiful you can see that yeah - So more serious obviously than petty crime is violent crime
and the homicide rate here in Ukraine is about 3.4 people per 100,000 who live here so to give you
a comparison in the rest of Europe like Western Europe it's going to be just a little bit under
one so that means that it's about three times higher here in Ukraine than it would be say in the
UK or Ireland or any of those countries in Western Europe which does sound an awful lot higher it's
actually about half of what it is in Russia it's already or it's a lot better than being in Russia
in terms of the murder rate now that might seem like they're people being shot dead left right
and center here in Ukraine but I have to say again in the city centers or amongst foreigners
here it's pretty unheard of to someone to get shot or someone to get violently attacked it's pretty
rare just be aware of the dangers that there are in general it's kind of the same for traveling
anywhere and you're good to go and just one final point I remember before the EuroMaidan revolution
in 2014 that the police here were a major issue for shaking down tourists they used to be like
this uniformed pack of bandits basically and if they spotted you and realized you were a foreigner
straight away ask you for your ID you didn't have your passport with you they would basically look
for money in exchange for not bringing to the police station and I even heard stories back in
the day about even if you had your passport still took a police station stole your passport and then
demanded money to find it again for you now thankfully that I have not heard about it since
2014 since the change of government here after the revolution right let's get on to the next issue
So o the last thing I'd like to discuss in today's video is the situation with
Russia and obviously you're probably aware that back in 2014 Russia annexed Crimea
and there has been a low-intensity conflict in the eastern country in Donbas for the last
few years so the violence with respect to the war between undeclared war between Russia and Ukraine
is just in the east of the country it's isolated to parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts basically
there has been a stalemate for more or less a stalemate there's a line of control and there's
kind of like trenches there but it's not going to affect you here in everyday life in Ukraine now
back in April tensions soared when Russia built up a large number of troops enough troops for
some sort of military incursion into Ukraine they claimed at the time it was just redeployment or
running maneuvers or whatnot Ukraine was worried it might be something bigger than that and
since then the situation has calmed down basically it seems like at this moment that that's not an
imminent possibility there will be any further escalation in the violence seemed at the time
pretty much like a faint dry run for an invasion and then there's some diplomatic
moves going behind the scenes that resolved it for now I'm always actually a bit amused when
we'll say dating coaches on youtube start telling you what they think Putin you know
what he's calculating as if they have any sort of clue or whatsoever but if you have some I guess IR
experience international relations training or you've worked in intelligence or worked in
the military then you're probably a bit better positioned to figure it out anyways bottom line
is the conflict is pretty much maybe not frozen completely and actually a difference might be
just maybe out of interest in Moldova you do have a separatist republic called Transnistria
Приднестровье
and there you can actually go without much bother and cross into that border and actually
go there to Tiraspol and I will do that at some stage in a future vlog I have filmed there it's
probably you might have seen some footage and not known it's actually from there that's
not the situation in eastern Ukraine you can't just cross over because the conflict is not
frozen like in Moldova it is there is still violence on more or less a daily basis on that
line of control between the two sides so that's it if you're in a big city and you're living here it
is not affecting you whatsoever on a daily basis and touchwood will not affect you going for it
So just before I go today I did reference earlier that two of the participants are my high level
consultation group Slavic Utopia Secrets: Ukraine they have been giving me some feedback they're
experiencing Kyiv since they arrived and they are staying longer than the three months visa-free and
that is why they have been sorting out their residency both as well as about another three
four five I don't know how many clients I've been helping so far maybe about seven or eight
actually we're up to at this stage with getting residency here in Ukraine that's necessary if
you want to stay longer than the 90 day every 180 days visa free here in Ukraine not only that
on the program the high level consultation group we go into deep into the real estate market here
in Ukraine because it is a huge attraction to invest in at the moment also we go into the
health care options if you're living here also go into the business opportunities how to network
how they're not ending up Billy no-mates if you move here I have another vodkast on that as
well on the channel and lastly how to overcome the language barrier because it is quite significant here in
Ukraine compared to say moving to Sweden I was watching a channel for guys who move to Sweden
but yeah Sweden also cool by the way also got lots of pretty girls but it is about minimum five six
times more expensive to live there so by moving to Eastern Europe you can 5x your lifestyle
compared to moving to Sweden for sure it's down below there is a link it's on demand
if you want to join and also I open it up for the live versions so far it's been twice a year
I'll probably just do it once a year live in the future but in order to be notified of that make
sure you're on my free mailing list down below there's also a link to get on that if you're not
on that already you just type in your email address and then confirm that you're not a robot
and you'll also receive a free gift from me which is the Tsar's hot spots for cities like Kyiv,
Odesa and neighboring Minsk in Belarus or Minsk in neighboring Belarus so got all that good stuff
for you down there and I bid you farewell on this a little bit cloudy evening in Kharkiv very close
to the Russian border in super safe and super free relatively free especially after all this
covid mayhem that has afflicted large parts of North America actually large parts of the world
I think it's been one of the freest definitely one of the freest regions in the last year
До побачення! До свидания! Ciao, ciao!