Flags waved once again over Kyiv's central Maidan Nezalezhnosti square on the evening of July 21. There were loud shouts of "Glory to Ukraine!" and "Glory to the heroes!" – the slogans of the mass public protests in 2013 and 2014 that toppled the corrupt regime of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
This time it wasn’t the blue and yellow national flag of Ukraine or the flag of the European Union that were in abundance on the square. It was the black and red battle flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the freedom fighters who fought Nazi Germans and the Red Army during and after World War II.
Many of them were emblazoned with the name and symbol of nationalist group Right Sector, who came to the square following an eponymous party congress to call a no-confidence vote in Petro Poroshenko’s administration.
The group’s leader, lawmaker Dmytro Yarosh, voiced frustration with the current government for keeping officials in government who served in the previous administration of Yanukovych. The events came after a paramilitary unit of Right Sector clashed with local police and the private security detail of lawmaker in westernmost Zakarpattya Oblast, on July 11 that left three people dead and a dozen wounded. The shootout, according to Ukraine’s State Security Service, involved control over smuggling channels in the region, which borders four European Union countries.
Authorities are currently investigating six Right Sector members involved in the bloody confrontation.
But on the evening of July 21, there was an air of concern and tension on the central Kyiv square, recalling the atmosphere during the EuroMaidan uprising. Platoons of the militant nationalist group’s volunteer soldiers, dressed in camouflage, marched down Institutska Street and onto the Maidan. The rally included a minute of silence for those killed in Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Addressing the crowd of around 3,000, Yarosh called for a continuation of the EuroMaidan Revolution. He said his organization’s aim was to “bring an end to the system of internal occupation” run by “predators in power” who’s “evolutionary path” had brought neither the needed changes to the country, nor an end to the war that has raged since the ouster of Yanukovych.
“You will have to help us, without you we are nothing,” Yarosh told the crowd of soldiers, activists and Kyiv residents attending the rally.
The native of Russian-speaking Dnipropetrovsk Oblast announced a change in the group’s tactics – the group will not run in Ukraine’s local elections, which are scheduled for Oct. 25. Instead, Right Sector plans to call a national referendum to impeach President Petro Poroshenko, and sack the government and parliament.
He also called for the conflict in the east to be officially declared a war against Russia, and for a total blockade of the occupied territories.
The rally’s attempt to recreate the sense of urgency of the EuroMaidan indeed seemed calculated to take advantage of Russia’s ongoing military aggression and the government’s foot dragging on reforms.
But left-wing activist and EuroMaidan veteran Vitaliy Dudin wasn’t buying it.
“The Right Sector is fighting for their own ideology, not for the nation,” he told the Kyiv Post. “They claim to know what’s best for the nation and aim to impose it on the state, but they don’t have the strength to pull it off, because the state is so much stronger.”
However, Dudin said he didn’t question the motives of the rank-and-file members of Right Sector – volunteer soldiers who have been fighting to defend Ukraine at the front.
Political expert Vitalii Kulyk from the Center for Civil Society Studies said that Yarosh’s call for a referendum was a public relations stunt designed to reconnect with the public. The obvious alternative – to campaign in the local elections – is a non-starter, as it would expose how weak public support for Right Sector actually is in Ukraine, according to Kulyk. The nationalist group’s political party garnered only 1.8 percent in last October’s parliamentary elections.
Instead, the group’s candidates will be on the party lists of the newly founded Ukrop party for this year’s local elections. With a patriotic-populist profile, the new party is allegedly backed by tycoon and former governor of Dnipropetrovsk Ihor Kolomoysky.
Kolomoysky is also widely believed to be co-funding Right Sector, although he denied this in an Ukrainska Pravda interview published on July 22.
Nevertheless, the banking and energy billionaire is no friend of the current government, having clashed with it over control of major energy sector assets. Dudin said that Kolomoysky might also be using Right Sector as leverage against the authorities.
But Kulyk adds that Right Sector “is a protest party without a core electorate.”
“It’s rather a franchise,” Kulyk said. He said the group’s leadership was making the Right Sector brand available to resourceful politicians throughout the country, and leaving local campaigning to them.
But that model could backfire. The group’s reputation was wounded during the July 11 shootout with police in Zakarpattya Oblast.
Political analyst Oleksandr Paliy said that Right Sector had low popularity even as a protest movement because the public in general distrusts all politicians, whom it sees as duplicitous and false.
The analyst said that not only had the Right Sector played a dubious role in the July 11 shootout, but that its public relations policy too often plays into the hands of the Kremlin.
“The KBG is famous for recruiting right wing politicians,” Paliy said referring to the Soviet secret service, and hinting at a direct connection between Right Sector and Moscow. “When the nation is under threat of armed invasion, you don’t (go up against the government) as Right Sector is doing now.”
Speaking at the July 21 rally, Yarosh appeared to acknowledge these fears, saying “the next phase of the revolution” would be peaceful, so as to prevent Ukraine’s enemies in Russia from creating “a real internal conflict.”
Party tactics aside, rally participants said they were frustrated with the lack of law and order in the country, again echoing original EuroMaidan sentiments.
Oleskiy Haran, professor of political science at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, said that with its push for faster change and a more radical break with cronyism and abuse of power, the Right Sector, which is commonly described as a far-right organization, was playing the role that leftist radicals usually played in other countries in times of change.
But the risk to the country is that any political destabilization brought about by radicals could ultimately help the forces that oppose reform, Haran said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Johannes Wamberg Andersen can be reached at [email protected].
