Ukraine hires selfie-snapping hot cops to make citizens like law enforcement

By Nidhi Prakash | July 13, 2015 | 3:43pm

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There have been over 6,000 deaths since the beginning of the unrest between Ukraine and Russia in mid-April 2014, and the tally is still rising, according to the United Nations.

So Ukrainian authorities thought this would be a good time to hire 2,000 new police officers, with an emphasis on good looking young people–and to encourage the new officers to take #KievPolice or #KyivPolice selfies with locals and tourists, the Kyiv Post reports.

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The new hires are part of an attempt to re-brand the police force, members of which were involved in anti-demonstrator violence in the Ukrainian capital Kiev’s main square, the Maidan, in February last year. In that conflict, around 100 anti-government protestors were killed, according to Newsweek, and the police force has also had a reputation for corruption.

The new recruits are being trained by American and Canadian police, and they’ve been re-named the “Politsiya” instead of the harsher-sounding “Militsiya”, Reuters reports .

Pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after protests broke out in Ukraine last February. Russia then took control of the Crimea, in the eastern part of Ukraine–a territory the two nations are still battling over despite agreeing to a ceasefire in September last year, the U.N. tells us.