The Ukraine police forces are notoriously corrupt - bribes are solicited by police on a day to day basis, and in many cases, officers are paid off by criminals to turn a blind eye to crime - minor or major.
If you are in the Ukraine and encounter a police officer and it is understood you are foreign, chances are you will be questioned for some reason and quite possibly charged with an offense.Just hand over your cash-usually about 10 dollars will do it.Do not argue with them and move on.
Funny I am in Ukraine right now and have been to Ukraine several times and that's never happened to me. Disagree that you should hand over anything to them. That sets a bad precedent.
I wasn't going to disagree because an obvious individual pick fault with whatever I say ...
The more of you that are easy suckers and pay the money present more problems for the guys behind you, one example of mine was a $20 fine for having 2, rather than 1, aerosols of deodorant in my checked-in baggage at DNK airport, I told the police, pretty much, "f*ck you" and, as I turned my back on them to board the bus to the aircraft, they recognised that I had won the battle.
Stand up to them and, sooner or later, they'll realise that us westerners have more than fresh air keeping our ears apart.
"I wasn't going to disagree because an obvious individual pick fault with whatever I say ..."
There's this lady at church who has a daughter who thinks everyone is out to kill her. She needs constant supervision and antipsychotic drugs. If I am who you are talking about, I think you are psychotic too, Martin. I don't believe you need drugs, but I think counseling can help. I point out your correcting another's grammar, nationality and other things for a specific reason. I think you can tell what that reason is. I write it everytime. I do not pick fault with whatever you say.
That being said, I think it is brave to turn your back on police. Perhaps I have been watching too much news and TV, but I see what police can do, especially when you are in another country. I have not heard about Ukraine and Russia much, but what are the chances of being detained for a specific amount of time, and perhaps interrogated and accused of being a spy? What else can they do? Have they?
I have been to Ukraine three times. Nothing bad happened to me about the police either.
At that time the Ukrainian authorities had installed CCTV in the airports to stamp out such corruption, the police took me to a side office where we would be off camera, they wouldn't even speak it to me, they could only write "$20" on a piece of paper.
These fuckers were prepared for me to miss my flight to Kiev and my onward (non changeable/refundable) connecting flights to UK just so they could scam $20 from me ... And I'm expected to display respect and stupidity to these fuckers accepting that, somehow, I had committed a criminal offence by have two aerosols of toiletries in my checked-in baggage?