"Phantom" patrol cars are returning to roads. Dozens of new speed cameras will come into operation this week, - Vyhivskyi

Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi announced that on 18 August, specific proposals had been drawn up to tackle systematic breaches of the Highway Code in the interests of road safety, and that these would be put before the National Security and Defence Council.

He wrote about this on Facebook, as reported by Censor.NET.

The President’s directive

Vyhivskyi said he had held a meeting attended by deputy ministers, the acting head of the National Police, and senior officials from the National Police and the Patrol Police Department. According to him, there is a clear mandate from the President to minimise road accidents.

The minister emphasised the need to increase the penalties for systematic breaches of the rules — they must be severe and inescapable. Priority is also being given to the safety of passenger transport and the regulation of light electric vehicles. According to Vyhivskyi, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in collaboration with MPs, has already developed a number of initiatives, and the ministry is counting on the support of parliament.

New cameras and ‘Phantoms’

The Minister stated that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is already beginning to implement a number of decisions independently — in particular, tightening controls on speeding, which is one of the main causes of road traffic accidents. This week, dozens of new automatic speed cameras will be put into operation, the locations of which will be announced by the patrol police in the near future.
Vyhivskyi also announced the return to the roads of ‘Phantom’ patrol cars — special vehicles that do not stand out from the rest but are equipped with systems to detect speeding offences, particularly whilst in motion.

He said that the "Phantoms" had been in operation for just one month before the full-scale war began, and during that time the police had brought more than 26,000 offending drivers to justice.

Road accident statistics

The minister recalled that the day before, an accident had occurred in the centre of Kyiv which, miraculously, did not result in any casualties, and noted that in the first few weeks of August alone, over 1,300 road traffic accidents involving casualties were recorded in Ukraine. According to Vyhivskyi, improving road safety is one of the tasks that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has proposed including in the Government’s Action Programme, and this involves not just fines but a comprehensive set of measures to improve road safety culture.

What led up to it?

As a reminder, on the morning of 17 August, two BMWs collided in Kyiv — as a result of the impact, one of them crashed into a restaurant’s summer terrace and overturned.
According to media reports, one of the drivers was Kyrylo Ostrovskyi, known for a high-profile 2018 road traffic accident on Lesia Ukrainka Boulevard, in which a 10-year-old girl was killed. In 2022, the Pechersk District Court in Kyiv sentenced him to 4.5 years in prison. However, the police have identified a different driver as the offender.

Fatal road traffic accident in Kyiv on 5 June 2026

As a reminder, on 5 June in Kyiv, the driver of a Mercedes car drove at high speed into a pedestrian zone near Karavaevi Dachi in the Solomianskyi district.
Senior Police Lieutenant Dmytro Bondarchuk, Police Lieutenant Denys Budchenko and 12-year-old Hryhorii Hlushych, whose father is currently serving in the war, were killed at the scene.
Iryna Lazareva, an employee of a pre-school education centre, was also killed.
The court remanded the killer driver, Pleshivtsev, in custody after he drove into an underpass in Kyiv, killing four people.
The father of 12-year-old Hryhorii Hlushych, who died in the road traffic accident in Kyiv, launched a petition calling for improved road safety and tougher penalties for reckless drivers; it gathered the required 25,000 signatures for consideration by the President in just 14 days.