The background of these images changed as police vehicles burned, pavements
were stripped of bricks and days were followed by nights.
But the actors all
seemed to be the same bunch: young, ready to act and ready to pay the price for
it.
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“If we don’t win, there will be severe sanctions against us,” admits
Yuriy, a 23-year old man who calls himself “absolutely apolitical.” He refused
to identify himself for fear of criminal prosecution.
Yuriy
says the government’s dismissive and repeated oppressive actions have pushed
him to join the radical group of protesters and throw explosive projectiles at
police officers.
“In
the first days of EuroMaidan, I didn’t use force. But it all changed after they
(authorities) used force first (on Nov. 30 and later). I’m prepared to stand until
the end, whatever it will be. I’m risking my health and life here, and I know
that,” he said.
The
group that formed the core of violent clashes as of Jan. 19 is the Right Sector
(Pravyi Sektor), a confederation of ultranationalists from different far-right
organizations. The group quickly became a weighty new factor in the political
crisis.
Dmytro
Yarosh, 42, one of their leaders, says the loose, quasi-military group has been
present on EuroMaidan since the first days of the protests, and its following
has been on the rise because protests have yielded limited results. They have
been a crucial part of EuroMaidan’s self-organized security structure all this
time.
Yarosh
says even more radical youths instigated the violent attacks on police on Jan.
19, but the Right Sector joined the second wave, which came “minutes or even
seconds” after the first. Many more frustrated people joined the group
spontaneously.
“This
is not an organization, this is a platform for people who want to defend the
state,” Yarosh explains. “We have many hundreds now people are arriving all the
time.”
“The
people are diverse and from all over Ukraine: the middle class, students,
sometimes kids –we send them back, those under 16,” says Yarosh.
Between
slinging cobblestones at the police and avoiding tear gas poisoning, young men
polled by the Kyiv Post have said they come from a wide range of localities,
including southern and eastern Ukraine, and many of them are Russian speakers.
Most of them insist they don’t have political ambitions.
Slavko,
a 20-year-old who was not covering his face at the protests but would not give
his last name because of the threat of criminal prosecution, says he came from
Kirovohrad in central Ukraine to fight for his freedom. Asked if he is prepared
to die for it, he says “Yes, sort of.”
Yarosh, the leader, is a native of Dniprodzerzhynsk in eastern Ukraine, who has been a member of the
far-right nationalist movement for 25 years, sounds better prepared for what’s
coming.
“I’ve had a confession, I took my communion, so now I am ready to die. I don’t
really want to – I am about to have a grandson soon, I don’t want to die – but
if I must, I will,” he says.
Mykhailo
Pogrebinskiy, a political consultant who works with many government members,
says it’s obvious that the radical right-wing prepared early on for an attack.
“They
prepared not for a day, they prepared to it for their whole lives,” he says.
Pogrebinskiy says they used the recent draconian laws approved by the
pro-presidential majority as an excuse.
“They
waited for the moment when it would look like a ‘we’re fed up’ kind of
reaction.”
Yarosh
says Ukraine has been occupied by criminals and oligarchy, and has to be freed
from it. A truly independent, free welfare state has to replace it. “The main
thing is to get rid of the regime, and what state to build in its stead people
will figure out,” Yarosh says.
The
top goal is resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych.
“We’re
not dropping this demand,” he says.
The
Right Sector is prepared to give Yanukovych a 24-hour grace period to leave the
country, and guarantee that he and his family will be safe to do it. They are
doing this to avoid bloodshed, Yarosh says.
In
the meantime, they are calling on all people who own legally registered weapons
to join the protesters because they are worried about police attacks. They seem
to plan and organize quite well.
Yuriy
Lilik, a student from Lviv and also a EuroMaidan security squad member, says
that each squad has a commander who gives orders, telling the group when to
attack and when to move back.
The
protesters are divided in two major groups, he said, the defenders and the
attackers. Lilik himself is on the defense team. He stands away from the
frontline, holding a bat that he carved from a piece of wood.
“My
instructions say that if the police make a move on us I must take all women and
children back to Independence Square,” he said.
Yulia
Tymoshenko, the jailed leader of the opposition and former prime minister, in
her Jan. 20 letter from prison, called these men heroes. “If I was free I would
be with you on Hrushevskoho. Freedom is worth fighting for,” she wrote.
But
the government is of a different opinion. As far as the police are concerned,
they are criminals, not heroes. On Jan. 20, the Interior Ministry issued a
statement saying they qualify the clashes with police since Jan. 19 as rioting,
and perpetrators can get up to 15 years in jail.
Police
have detained at least one Right Sector member during the Jan. 19-20 clashes on
Hrushevsky Street. Another protester
they detained is a 41-year old former murder convict nicknamed Skull who was
described as “involved in the activity of (right-wing) organization Patriot of
Ukraine.”
Former
and current members of Patriot of Ukraine are known to make up Right Sector.
Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller
contributed reporting to this story.
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