Tense standoff cools over Right Sector’s military role

On April 28, Ukrainian army units surrounded the base of Right Sector’s Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, set up last year, on the border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblasts in what the right-wing group described as an attempt to disarm them. The authorities have long demanded that fighters of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, which has no legal status, either disarm or join the army.

Right Sector held a protest against the authorities’ actions near the presidential administration on April 29. The situation was tense as Artyom Skoropadsky, the group’s spokesman, said that the building would be “burned to the ground” if the authorities continued their alleged assault on the group.

But subsequently Right Sector and the authorities agreed that the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps would become a separate unit within the army, Andrei Taranov, a deputy presidential chief of staff, told protesters at the rally. However, he was booed by the demonstrators who apparently distrusted him.

President Petro Poroshenko has told Dmytro Yarosh, Right Sector’s leader, that army units would be withdrawn from the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps base in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Andrei Tarasenko, a deputy head of the nationalist group, told reporters.

Andriy Sharansky, the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps’ spokesman, said by phone that the base was still surrounded but added that the parties had made progress during their negotiations. However, he said he knew nothing of a deal to integrate the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps into the armed forces.

Right Sector said Ukrainian army units had set up several checkpoints around the base and were inspecting people traveling to and from the location. But Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for the presidential administration, denied that the military maneuvers in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast were aimed at disarming Right Sector. He said they were military exercises.

Andriy Bondarenko, a member of Right Sector’s governing body, described those responsible for the situation around the base as Kremlin agents. “They are traitors of Ukraine and should be punished ruthlessly,” he said at the Right Sector rally, which was attended by about 300 people, including camouflaged members of the group and their supporters in civilian clothes.

He said the authorities were driven by their fear of the “most active and most patriotic people” in their actions.

Yarosh and Andriy Stempitsky, commander of the corps, issued orders not to give up any weapons and to protect the base “under martial law,” Skoropadsky said at the rally.

“Why should the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps give up its weapons, given that they acquired them in battle by spilling their blood and didn’t get a single machine gun, assault rifle or handgun from the state?” Skoropadsky said.

He called for punishing those responsible for the situation around the base, which he described as a provocation.

The authorities have refused to let the corps join the army as a separate unit with its own commanders and demanded that fighters join existing army units individually, Skoropadsky said. If the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps joins the armed forces, it could become something similar to the Estonian Defense League, an officially sanctioned paramilitary organization, he added.

He also said that the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps had been in talks on joining either the Defense Ministry or State Security Service but was against being integrated into the Interior Ministry due to its disagreements with it.

Right Sector activists’ comments reflect their growing frustration with what they see as pervasive corruption, incompetent military leadership and authorities’ attempts to surrender chunks of Ukrainian territory to Russia and its proxies. Some of them even called for overthrowing Poroshenko.

“The next rally will last as long as the presidential administration burns to the ground,” Skoropadsky said. “…Most corrupt and mean politicians who have dirt and blood on their hands understand that soldiers will sooner or later come to Kyiv and ask this scum what they were doing when our fighters were dying over there.”

Right Sector protesters claimed at the rally that the authorities’ attempts to disarm the right-wing group were an effort to comply with the Feb. 12 Minsk ceasefire deal. Right Sector has criticized the agreement, which stipulates disarming “illegal” armed groups on both sides, because it believes that the deal undermines the nation’s territorial integrity.

The tensions are part of a wider conflict between the military leadership and volunteer fighters. The authorities have sought to subjugate volunteer units and described them as lacking discipline and order, while volunteers have criticized the regular army for alleged incompetence.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].