Jul 12, 2015

Right Sector threatens to bring 17 battalions to Kiev (updated)

by Systematic

Right Sector in Mukachevo yesterday. AP photo

KIEV, July 12. /TASS/. Ukraine’s extremist organisation Right Sector is not going to lay arms and will demonstrate its force to Kiev’s authorities, the organisation’s press secretary Artem Skoropadsky told a briefing on Sunday.

“As our leader Dmitry Yarosh has not given orders to lay arms, our soldiers will not do so,” he said, adding the organisation had an additional 17 battalions in reserve, which are training now before being sent to Donbass and “if necessary, they all will be sent to the presidential administration and the interior ministry, and then the authorities will see what angry nationalists are like.”

The press secretary said the nationalists would continue their protest rallies until Interior Minister Arsen Avakov is dismissed.

“In western Ukraine, the police has been supervising smuggling for 20 years, and within the year of Avakov’s power the situation has not changed. Nor has it changed in the entire country. Lustration has not worked, corruption is booming. We are not going to be standing peacefully, we shall be talking to the power differently, toughly.”

A representative of the Right Sector’s 13th battalion Alexei Byk said the weapons his soldiers had “were captured in the fighting in Donbass, and they are not going to report it to the authorities.” The gunmen in Mukachevo had received additional weapons from their allies and retreated to the mountains, he added. Earlier he said the organisation’s forces were organising checkpoints around Mukachevo so that the government’s law enforcers could not send more forces there.

Meanwhile, representatives of the law enforcers and of Right Sector are trying to settle the conflict by negotiations. The organisation’s leader Dmitry Yarosh came to Mukachevo earlier on Sunday.

The Trans Carpathian Prosecutor’s Office said that three people were killed and another eleven wounded in the Mukachevo attack on Saturday, July 11. The Interior Ministry reported one civilian was among the dead. At the same time, the Right Sector said its two members were killed and another four were injured.

The prosecutors have described the incident in Mukachevo as a terror attack.

Shortly after that, President Poroshenko ordered the law enforcement agencies “to disarm and detain the criminals who opened fire and killed peaceful civilians in Mukachevo.” Right Sector has put its supporters into a state of alert.

Some 20 gunmen of the Right Sector group arrived at a cafe located on the premises of a sports complex controlled by Ukrainian MP Mikhail Lanyo on Saturday. Police and eyewitnesses said the gunmen had come for a meeting with Lanyo’s representatives to discuss the “redistribution of spheres of influence.”

A conflict erupted between the talks, and the extremists later on opened fire from small arms on their opponents. The police arrived at the scene and tried to block the get-away route for the gunmen. In response, the gunmen opened fire using rifles, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.

Breaking the police cordon, the Right Sector gunmen left the city by cars and burnt several police vehicles by opening fire from grenade launchers and also set on fire a traffic police checkpoint and a petrol station.

The law enforcers, including a special task force of the Interior Ministry and the Security Service, blocked the Right Sector gunmen in the wooded areas near Lavki.

Right Sector’s members are blocking the presidential administration in Kiev and the organisation’s guards are near regional administrations in Lvov, Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporozhje and Nikolayev.

TASS reports additionally:

KIEV, July 12. /TASS/. The Ukrainian military are relocating heavy weapons to the western town of Mukachevo, a representative of the extremist organisation Right Sector, Andrei Sharaskin, said on Sunday.

“It is a big column, even with gas and water suppliers; it is near Mukachevo already,” he said in an interview with 112 Ukraine television channel. […]

Special forces of Ukraine’s National Guard arrive in Mukachevo: