Ukraine’s ultranationalist movement Right Sector has launched a nationwide mobilization and is withdrawing from the Donbass conflict zone following deadly clashes with police near the southwestern town of Mukachevo on Saturday.
13 July 2015
Over 100 activists and representatives of the Right Sector protested outside the Presidential Administration in Kiev, Monday. Some of the protesters wore masks and balaclavas as governmental security forces stood guard at the entrance to the building. No clashes were reported.
European Union Ambassador to Ukraine, Jan Tombinski, expressed hope for an early settlement of the conflict in Mukachevo and urged the Kiev authorities to perform a thorough investigation of the shootout.
"I look forward to a speedy conclusion to the conflict in Mukachevo. The immediate cessation of unlawful acts and respect for the rule of law are extremely important. Only the state has the exclusive right to provide public order and the use of weapons,” Tombinski wrote on Facebook.
The EU expects that the incident “will be thoroughly investigated by the authorities and the perpetrators of illegal acts will be held accountable,” the ambassador added.
The order to disarm all illegal armed groups in the country given by Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, doesn’t apply to the Right Sector, Artem Skoropadsky, ultranationalist group’s spokesman stressed.
"The statement by Petro Poroshenko is addressed to illegal armed groups. We are not an illegal armed group. Illegal armed groups are bandits, and we are volunteer Ukrainian corps Ukrainian, which protects the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Therefore, this statement does not apply to us," Skoropadsky told the RIA-Novosti news agency.
Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, has ordered the Interior Ministry and Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) to disarm all illegal armed groups in the country.
“No political force should have armed cells and no political force will have one,” Poroshenko said during a meeting of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC).
According to the president, the appearance of heavily armed men in Mukachevo, “a thousand kilometers away from the front line,” is an attempt to destabilize the situation in Ukraine.
“The authorities will not allow this,” he promised.
The president stressed that the essence of the conflict in Mukashevo, situated near the borders of Slovakia and Hungary, was the “redistribution of smuggling routes.”
“It is very embarrassing for the EU to see people marching on the streets of Kiev wearing Nazi insignia,” Neil Clark, journalist and broadcaster, told RT. ‘Western officials are still in denial about these things. The problem now for Poroshenko is that he will have to either concede ground or fight with far right.’
The leader of the Right Sector group Dmitry Yarosh announced that he hadn’t relocated his group’s fighters.
“Any information about moving battalions of the Voluntary Ukrainian Unit from the area of fighting is wrong,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
According to Yarosh, “Right Sector is performing combat missions in the areas of their responsibility, defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country [Ukraine].”
Shots were fired in Mukachevo village in the early hours of Monday, according to the Ukrainian TV station 112, as cited by Interfax news agency. Several armored vehicles have also been spotted in the area. The reports haven’t been confirmed by officials or local journalists.
Right Sector announced that its “Fifth Battalion” is heading to support the organization's rally in Kiev.
«Правый сектор» пригрозил пойти на Киев http://t.co/nYcCFCh7yLpic.twitter.com/V2CkxpED6Z
— 1001portails Russie (@1001ptsRU) July 12, 2015
“The Fifth Battalion is heading to Kiev,” Right Sector spokesman Dmitry Savchenko told Ukraine's Chanel 5 News. “It's real people, citizens who have the same civil rights as we do...this does not mean that they are going there with assault rifles and machine guns.”
“But it is reasonable to hold an indefinite protest and that the soldiers to take part in this action,” he said.
Secretary for the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Aleksandr Turchinov proposes a “serious” personnel cleansing at all levels in Ukraine's Carpathian region.
“We are looking for serious personnel changes in the region, both in security and in the administrative block. We need to finally vote in Parliament to remove the immunity of deputies and judges. We must finally rid the country of criminals and corrupt officials,” Turchinov wrote on Facebook.
Коли ти стріляєш з автомата чи гранатомета по ворогам на фронті - ти герой, але коли починаєш стріляти з цієї ж зброї у ...Posted by Олександр Турчинов on Sunday, July 12, 2015
At the same time the politicians said that besides capturing the Right Sector fighters in Mukachevo, special forces deployed in the area must “harshly deal” with those, who under the guise of “government posts and deputy mandates,” are covering up illegal criminal activity in the region.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) that arrived in Mukachevo to meet with authorities and observe SBU operations noted that Kiev is increasing its troops in the Carpathian region.
The team witnessed a “Ukrainian Armed Forces convoy moving towards Mukachevo, comprised of 11 APCs, two trucks loaded with soldiers and one fuel truck,” SMM said in a statement.
On their way to Mukachevo, the SMM observed heightened security measures, including several police checkpoints.
“At one such checkpoint, north of Mukachevo, about 2km from the alleged incident scene, the SMM saw the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) arriving, with 10 armored vans and two minibuses,” SMM said.
They added, that police delivered one dead body to the hospital while the SBU escorted two “seriously wounded persons.”
According to SMM, three civilians and three police who had been admitted on Saturday have been already discharged.
12 July 2015
Right Sector is exerting political pressure on Poroshenko as negotiations with its fighters in Mukachevo are continuing, the paramilitary group's spokesman, Artem Skoropadsky said.
“Right Sector is using elements of political pressure on authorities,” Skoropadsky told 112 Ukraine. “We don't want to initiate any sort of conflict, but for this Poroshenko needs to meet the demands, not only of the Right Sector, but also of other people."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko summoned the War Cabinet on Monday.
Події в Мукачево стануть головною темою Військового кабінету, який Президент проведе у понеділок. Нагадаю, що Військовий кабінет є робочим органом РНБО.Posted by Svyatoslav Tsegolko on Sunday, July 12, 2015
"The events in Mukachevo will be the main theme of the War Cabinet, which the president will hold on Monday. Let me remind you that the War Cabinet is a working body of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine," Ukrainian Presidential Press Secretary Svyatoslav Tsegolko said on Facebook.
Right Sector has denied earlier reports that two of their fighters have surrendered to the Ukrainian authorities, the group said on its Facebook page, Ukraine 112 reports.
Citing earlier statements alleging their surrender from the adviser to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Anton Gerashchenko, Right Sector says two of their members were taken to hospital “in order to save their lives.”
Right Sector fighters, who were blockaded by security forces near the town of Mukachevo, have managed to escape, Vasily Guban, the governor of the Zakarpattia Region, said.
“The armed Right Sector members will be tracked down. At the moment, their whereabouts is unknown. They never gave up their weapons and didn’t contact the police,” Guban said, as cited by Ukraine’s 24 channel.
Right Sector activists are holding rallies in 17 cities across Ukraine in support of the radicals blockaded by authorities after the shootout in Mukachevo, the organization’s website said.
“The protests have been announced in Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Zaporozhye, Ternopol, Mariupol, Kherson, Kramatorsk, Poltava and other cities of Ukraine,” the statement reads.
Right Sector spokesman Andrey Sharaskin told Ukraine’s 112 channel that all of the organization’s fighters have left their positions in the country’s eastern Donetsk Region, where Kiev is conducting a military operation against rebels, and returned to their bases.
“Over 10,000 [Right Sector] activists have been mobilized all across Ukraine” due to tensions with the authorities, Sharaskin added.
Two injured Right Sector fighters from the group of radicals blocked in by the police after a shootout in Mukachevo have given themselves up to the Ukrainian authorities, Anton Geraschenko, an interior ministry adviser, said.
According to the medics, two young men, one born in 1990 and one in 1998, have been hospitalized with a fractured arm and leg between them.
Right Sector spokesman, Artem Skoropadsky said that nothing has changed under Poroshenko’s rule compared to the times of his predecessor Viktor Yanukovich, whom the Right Sector helped to oust in February 2014.
The current president is to blame for “chaos, murder, corruption, lack of lustration, the return of old Yanukovich era officials, lack of reform and everything that is happening now,” he stressed.
Right Sector has around 20 reserve battalions in Lvov, northwestern Ukraine, the southern city of Krivoy Rog and elsewhere in the country – and those units are ready to act if the Ukrainian authorities decided to take a stand against the radical nationalists, Right Sector spokesman, Artem Skoropadsky, said.
“The Right Sector is the party of direct action. If they will not hear us, we will have to communicate in other ways,” Skoropadsky said.
He threatened to dispatch all reserve battalions to “the presidential administration and the Interior Ministry so that [Interior Minister Arsen] Avakov and President [Petro Poroshenko] could themselves witness the number of people in the Right Sector.”
During a press conference in Kiev, Right Sector spokesman, Artem Skoropadsky, said the organization’s leader, Dmitry Yarosh, has not given an order to his fighters to lay down their arms.
“Until such an order is given they (the fighters) are not going to surrender or give up their weapons,” Skoropadsky stressed.
Right Sector militants set up a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kiev on Sunday, following deadly clashes between the group and police in Mukachevo which reportedly caused two deaths and more injuries.
Ukrainian security forces began evacuating civilians living in the vicinity of Mukachevo overnight as negotiations with Right Sector fighters failed.
“Taking into account the danger for the villagers in the area where the so-called Right Sector militants barricaded themselves, the evacuation of civilians, especially children, is being carried out,” the SBU statement reads.
11 July 2015
The fighting between Right Sector militants and security forces in the western Ukrainian town was caught on camera.
The Right Sector has issued a statement, saying that two of their fighters have been killed and four other wounded during the initial standoff in Mukachevo.
The statement added that “the entire Right Sector military and political movement has been placed on combat alert.”
A video surfaced online showing heavily armed Right Sectors fighters in the town of Mukachevo.
Right Sector fighters have killed one civilian and wounded four others, with six police officers also being injured in the standoff on Saturday afternoon, the Ukrainian authorities said.
The General Prosecutor of Ukraine has qualified the action of the Right Sector fighters during a near the town of Mukachevo as “an act of terror.”
Right Sector insists that its people did not provoke the violence and it was the fault of police, who are in bed with the corrupt politicians controlling the smuggling channels in the mountainous Carpathian region.
“Members of the Right Sector’s first reserve battalion have been blocking smuggling channels for a long time,” Right Sector spokesperson Andrey Sharaskin told Ukraine’s 112 channel.
The blocked Right Sector fighters have released a video claiming that only 12 of them arrived at the Mukachevo meeting initiated by local MP Mikhail Lanyo,.
They said they greeted there by “over 100 armed thugs sent by Lanyo,” while the violence began only after a group “unidentified spetsnaz” charged into the scene while the Right Sector brigade was trying to flee.
SWAT police and special National Guard units, as well as Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) agents have secured the area and blockaded members Right Sector group on the outskirts of Mukachevo near Hungarian and Slovakian border.
“To prevent possible bloodshed, the Security Service and Interior Ministry demand that the illegal armed group lays down [its] arms and surrenders,” the SBU said in a statement, adding that fighters refuse to surrender unless ordered directly by Right Sector (‘Pravy Sektor’) leader Dmitry Yarosh.
About two dozen fighters wearing camouflage uniform, bearing Right Sector, insignia opened fire in a sports cafe in the western Ukrainian town of Mukachevo.
When police arrived, the militants attacked law enforcement officers using Kalashnikovs, RPG-7 grenade launchers and other weapons.
According to Ukrainian media, the violence allegedly erupted as a result of an ongoing “turf war” between Right Sector members and local MP Mikhail Lanyo, who controls many businesses in the area.