What is "militsiya"

Militsiya (, , , , , , , Serbo-Croatian: милиција / milicija, , , , ), often confused with militia, is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states. The term was used in the Soviet Union and several Warsaw Pact countries, as well as in the non-aligned SFR Yugoslavia, and it is still commonly used in some of the individual former Soviet republics and eastern Europe.

The militsiya was the national police service of Ukraine from the 1950s until 2015. The militsiya was formed whilst Ukraine was governed by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union, and continued to serve as a national police service in independent Ukraine until it was replaced by the National Police of Ukraine on 7 November 2015.

The agency was under direct control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (known by the Ukrainian acronym MVS), and was widely seen as corrupt.