Right Sector

Right Sector () is a loosely defined coalition of right-wing to far-right Ukrainian nationalist organizations. It originated in November 2013 as a right-wing, paramilitary confederation of several ultranationalist organizations at the Euromaidan revolt in Kyiv, where its street fighters participated in clashes with riot police. The coalition became a political party on 22 March 2014, at which time it claimed to have roughly 10,000 members. Founding groups included the Trident (''Tryzub''), led by Dmytro Yarosh and , and the Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA–UNSO), a political and paramilitary organization.Behind the scenes of Right Sector
, ''Ukrayinska Pravda'' (1 April 2014) Other founding groups included the Social-National Assembly, and its Patriot of Ukraine paramilitary wing, White Hammer, and the Sich Battalion. White Hammer was expelled in March 2014, and Patriot of Ukraine left the organization, along with many UNA–UNSO members, in the following months.

Right Sector has been described as a right-wing or far right nationalist political party and movement. Right Sector was the second-most mentioned political group in Russian media during the first half of 2014, and Russian state TV depicted it as neo-Nazi. In March 2014, Associated Press declared that it has found no evidence that the group had committed hate crimes.

In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Yarosh won a parliament seat as a Right Sector candidate by winning a single-member district with 29.8% of the votes. Right Sector spokesperson Boryslav Bereza also won a seat as an independent candidate and district with 29.4% of the votes., RBK Ukraine
Boryslav Bereza very short bio
, RBK Ukraine
Video of first brawl in Verkhovna Rada becomes a YouTube hit
, Kyiv Post (5 December 2014) In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Right Sector took part on a united radical right nationwide-party list with the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh, National Corps, and Svoboda, winning no seats.

The Right Sector fought in the Donbas war with its own paramilitary wing, the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps. In April 2015, Yarosh was appointed an advisor to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In November, Yarosh formally stepped down as the group's leader. In December, he announced that he and his team would be withdrawing from the group entirely, declaring that Right Sector had fulfilled its purpose "as a revolutionary structure" and was no longer needed. He stated that he and his faction were against pseudo-revolutionary activity that threatens the state, fringe radicalism, and were against violent revolts against the government. In a statement issued in response to Yarosh's departure, Right Sector said the schism was due to its continuing a "revolutionary path". The departure of Yarosh resulted in at least 20% of Right Sector members leaving with him, together with three battalions of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps to form a new paramilitary group named Ukrainian Volunteer Army. In February 2016, Yarosh started a new organisation called the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh. Since 19 March 2016, Tarasenko has been the new chairman of Right Sector.

In November 2022, the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps was reformed as the 67th Separate Mechanized Brigade and became part of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. In 2024, the 67th Brigade was disbanded and its members transferred to other brigades of the Ground Forces, due to alleged preferential treatment of Right Sector members, which led to repeated losses in Battle of Chasiv Yar.

Name

The organization's name in Ukrainian is ''Правий сектор'' (transliterated ''Pravyy sektor''), translated as ''Right Sector''. (General-audience publications often transliterate it as ''Pravy Sektor'' or ''Pravyi Sektor''.) One account derives the name from the group's effort to protect the right-hand side of the Euromaidan protestors at one point during the Maidan protests. Dmytro Yarosh owns the trademark "Right Sector". Russian language-speakers may refer to members of the Right Sector as ''pravoseki'' (); singular: ''pravosek'' ().

History

Origins

Right Sector was formed in late November 2013 as a confederation of street-fighting soccer fans and right-wing nationalist groups: Patriot of Ukraine (Andriy Belitsky), the Social-National Assembly, Trident (Dmytro Yarosh), UNA–UNSO ( Yuriy Shukhevych), White Hammer, and Carpathian Sich. The BBC reports that Right Sector's Kyiv organization is primarily formed by Russian-speaking soccer ultras who share nationalist views.

The organization views itself within the tradition of Ukrainian partisans, such as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought in the Second World War against the Soviet Union and both for and against the Nazi Germany. Yarosh, Right Sector's leader, has trained armed nationalists in military exercises since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Co-founder Andriy Tarasenko told LIGA news agency in January 2014 that most participants were "ordinary citizens not related to any organizations".

Right Sector claims to have received donations from the Ukrainian diaspora.

Entry into Euromaidan

Right Sector became one of the main actors in the January 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots, a part of the Euromaidan protests, in their later and more violent stages. On 19 January 2014 the organization encouraged its members to bring bottles to the protests to produce Molotov cocktails and bombs. The Yanukovich government classified it as an extremist movement and threatened its members with imprisonment.

Right Sector has been described as the most organized and most effective of the Euromaidan forces when it came to confronting police. Right Sector claims that it was the main organizer of violent resistance against armed attacks by the state at Euromaidan. Yarosh stated that the group had amassed a sizable arsenal of weapons; these include guns taken from police stations in Western Ukraine.

The Israeli newspaper ''Haaretz'' reported antisemitic incidents involving Svoboda and Right Sector during the demonstration, where their militants were calling political opponents " Zhyd" and flying flags with neo-Nazi symbols. According to Haaretz, these organizations were also distributing translated editions of ''Mein Kampf'' and the ''Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' to the demonstrators in Independence Square.

On 4 March 2014, the organization called on readers of its Vkontakte social-media page to "correct th misunderstanding" that had been created in English and Russian Wikipedia that Right Sector is fascist and neo-Nazi. According to political science professor Olexiy Haran, Right Sector's role in Ukrainian politics was "extremely exaggerated" by Ukrainians associated with Yanukovich.

Recovery of the Secret Ledger

Mustafa Nayyem stated that he was with members of the Right Sector when they entered Viktor Pshonka's luxurious mansion and that the Right Sector recovered numerous GPU files from Pshonka's mansion after members of the Yanukovych government fled in exile to Russia. These files included the secret bookkeeping of Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions' Black Ledger () or Barn Book (), which implicated numerous persons to improper payments from pro-Kremlin and pro-Vladimir Putin sources including Paul Manafort for which the book included the handwritten records of 22 payments over five years to Manafort, nine of which had been signed by Vitaly Anatolyevich Kalyuzhny (), who was the Verkhovna Rada's foreign relations committee chairman. On 17 August 2016, Donald Trump removed Manafort as Trump's campaign chairman following Trump's first national security briefing directly because of the records in the secret ledger.

After Trump won the 2016 United States presidential election, Manafort demanded that the White House, Trump himself, and later Rudy Giuliani actively pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit Leshchenko and others because Leshchenko had published information from the Yanukovych Secret Ledger that was highly critical of Manafort's work in Ukraine. Manafort provided information to Giuliani and his company Giuliani Partners, including its employees Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to smear Leshchenko and others in Ukraine and entered into a joint legal defense agreement between Manafort's attorneys and Trump's attorneys. Manafort and Giuliani also discussed how to deal with Marie Yovanovitch.

Aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution

In February 2014, Yarosh and the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine agreed to establish a "hotline" to prevent provocations and coordinate actions when issues arise. The group assists in the protection of Jewish sites in Odesa. In April 2014, Yarosh allegedly demanded to be appointed Vice Prime Minister for the law enforcement matters but his demand was rejected; he was offered a post of the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine instead but Yarosh rejected this position as being beneath him. There were discussions of appointing Yarosh deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, but these discussions quickly petered out for unknown reasons.

Right Sector became a dominant theme of Russian propaganda, which grossly exaggerated its strength and influence in the new Ukraine. It was portrayed as a mortal threat to Russian speakers and Jews that necessitated a Russian military intervention. By April, Right Sector was being mentioned on Russia television almost as frequently as Putin's own United Russia party. In Crimea and the East, a "Right Sector" vandalism spree targeting synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and Holocaust memorials was widely seen as a Russian false flag attack. In Simferopol, a synagogue was defaced with the wolfsangel symbol used by the Ukrainian far-right, but in the mirror-image of its normal orientation; in Odesa, vandals defaced a Jewish cemetery with graffiti reading "Right Sector" but misspelled the group's name. The next day Yarosh met with the Chief Rabbi of Odesa to show solidarity with Ukrainian Jews and was photographed helping paint over the graffiti.

On 7 March 2014, Tarasenko told Interfax-Ukraine that the "informal movement" would be transforming itself into a political party at a congress on 15 March. On 11 March 2014, Russian Duma opposition leader Valery Rashkin called on Russian special services to "liquidate" Yarosh and Right Sector's leader for West Ukraine, UNA–UNSO member Oleksandr Muzychko. He said that Muzychko had fought for Chechen separatists against Russian troops and been charged with banditry. Muzychko (who was given the nom de guerre "Sachko Bilyi") had also become known for the farcical Right Sector video, "Sachko Communicates with a Prosecutor", in which he yells at a local prosecutor, snatches his tie and threatens to drag him to Independence Square with a rope.

Muzychko was shot to death in Rivne, Ukraine, on 24 March 2014. A witness told a local news service that a dozen men took Muzychko out of a cafe, handcuffed him, and beat him and two bodyguards. Others said that they later heard two shots fired near the cafe. Ukraine's Interior Ministry stated that he was shot after opening fire on police and Sokil special forces. He was captured alive and arrested but died from his wounds before paramedics arrived. Police said he was being detained on suspicion of organized crime links, hooliganism and threatening public officials.

Right Sector representatives held Interior Minister Arsen Avakov accountable for his death and vowed to avenge him. On 27 March 2014, Right Sector supporters demanded Avakov's resignation and tried to storm the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament). The next day, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, stated, "I strongly condemn the pressure by activists of the Right Sector who have surrounded the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Such an intimidation of the parliament is against the democratic principles and rule of law." A few days later, the group released an app that allows its members to organize tactics at events without being identified. On 31 March 2014, a drunken Right Sector activist started shooting near a restaurant in central Kyiv. Three people were wounded, including the deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration.

2014 pro-Russian conflict and 2014 Ukrainian election results

In April 2014, Right Sector announced that it had begun to form a special Donbas battalion for its paramilitary operations in the war in Donbas.Yarosh assembles 'Donbas' special battalion
, Kyiv Post (24 April 2014)
Ukraine's extremists forming battalion in Donetsk region
, ITAR-TASS (24 April 2014) On 22 April 2014, pro-Russian insurgents in Sloviansk detained American journalist Simon Ostrovsky for several days on suspicion of spying for the group.

Right Sector was officially registered as a political party by the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice on 22 May 2014. A regional chief told ''The Wall Street Journal'' that it was less interested in running for office than in getting politicians to keep their promises. In the 25 May 2014 presidential race Yarosh received 127,000 votes, 0.7% of the total cast.
In a mid-May 2014 poll by the sociological group Rating, the party itself scored 1.7%. On 13 June 2014, a prosecutor's office in Kyiv was stormed by people who claimed to be Right Sector activists. Yarosh denied his organization's involvement and claimed that he could not have given orders to picket "the man who helped Euromaidan". On 15 October 2014, around 125 masked men with Right Sector insignia blocked the company Zaporizhstal; Right Sector denied involvement in this blockade and labelled it as an attempt to discredit the organization. In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Yarosh as a Right Sector candidate won a parliament seat by winning single-member district number 39 located in Vasylkivka Raion with 29.76% of the votes.
The party had competed in 35 districts. Yarosh did not join a faction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament). In the same election, Boryslav Bereza, Right Sector's chief of information, also won a seat as an independent candidate by winning a district in Kyiv with 29.44% of the votes. Bereza also did not join a faction. Right Sector did not take part in the October 2015 Ukrainian local elections.

2015 clash with Ukraine's special security service

On 10 July 2015, Ukrainian government forces clashed with Right Sector forces in the city of Mukacheve, located in Western Ukraine. Two people were killed and seven wounded. According to President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko's parliamentary faction leader Yuriy Lutsenko, these events "result d fromthe conflict of interests between illegal armed groups and a mafia overtly cooperating with law enforcers." Some local leaders indicated the conflict ensued when Right Sector forces attempted to clamp down on the lucrative illegal cigarette smuggling trade to Western Europe, in which local law enforcement have been complicit. Immediate fallout from the events included the sacking of the leadership of the local Zakarpatya district customs service. Ukrainian MP Mykhailo Lanyo, fingered in the smuggling ring, reportedly fled Ukraine. Right Sector leader Yarosh called for calm, and denied that Right Sector troops were being withdrawn from eastern Ukraine.

After Yarosh's departure

Yarosh resigned as Right Sector leader on 11 November 2015.Yarosh quits as Right Sector leader
, Interfax Ukraine (11 November 2015)
Right Sector chief Yarosh resigns, cedes leadership role of group
, Kyiv Post (11 November 2015) Late December 2015 he announced that he was forming a new political party that would start in February 2016. In February 2016 he started a new organisation called '' Governmental Initiative of Yarosh''. The departure of Yarosh resulted in at least 20% of Right Sector members leaving with him. At a party congress of 19 March 2016, Andriy Tarasenko was elected chairman of Right Sector.Right Sector declares ambitious plans to partake in elections
, UNIAN (23 March 2016)
"Right Sector" elected new chairman
, ''Ukrayinska Pravda'' (19 March 2016) Before Euromaidan, he and Yarosh were the leading figures of Trident (Tryzub). Tarasenko vowed in March 2016 that Right Sector would take part in all elections in Ukraine.

On 19 November 2018 Right Sector and fellow Ukrainian nationalist political organizations Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and C14 endorsed Ruslan Koshulynskyi's candidacy in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. In the election Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the votes.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Right Sector joined a united party list with the political parties Svoboda, Governmental Initiative of Yarosh and National Corps.Yarosh, Tyagnibok and Biletsky have all formed a single list for the elections
, Glavcom (9 June 2019) Yarosh was placed third on this party list, while Tarasenko placed fourth. In the election, they won 2.15% of the votes, less than half of the 5% election threshold, and no parliamentary seats via the national party list.CEC counts 100 percent of vote in Ukraine's parliamentary elections
, Ukrinform

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