Ukrainians really have the Shake-Down thing down to a science. Did they study under the Mafia?
>>Did they study under the Mafia?
In the Soviet Union, organized crime always existed, but it was controlled by the state under fairly strict limits. Sort of like the Japanese yakuza. It was often organized on ethnic basis, since that afforded better cohesion, e.g. Chechen gangs.
Once Gorby screwed up and the government failed, organized crime came out of the shadows and really flourished. It became hard to tell where organized crime left off and oligarch cabals began.
So no, they didn’t have to study under the Mafia. They had their own “our thing”.