Members of Right Sector said they wanted to halt lucrative cross-border smuggling by groups linked to a local parliamentary deputy, who is reputed to have close ties to pro-Russian figures in Ukraine and was an ally of ousted former president Viktor Yanukovich.
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Right Sector members and their supporters during an ongoing protest rally near the Ukrainian presidential administration building.
Mukacheve is not far from the border with Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, and local officials have long faced accusations of setting up and controlling the smuggling of contraband. The Russian Ministry of Justice added the Right Sector to a list of non-commercial organizations that are banned in the country in January. Mr Yarosh was engaged in direct negotiations with Petro Poroshenko, the president, and the head of the SBU, Ukraine’s interior security service.
A report in RT has said that Right Sector has threatened to deploy their entire armed and trained battalions – “if necessary” – to convince the Kiev government to bow to their demands, as an armed standoff between authorities and nationalists continues in western Ukraine.
Two people were killed Saturday in a Right Sector gun-and-grenade attack on police in a western Ukrainian city.
The fighting marks the first clash between Kiev and one of the country’s “volunteer battalions” who have led the fight against pro-Russian separatists. “They are training, they are getting prepared to be sent to the front”, Artem Skoropadsky, the group’s spokesman, said at a press conference in Kiev. Two people were killed and 11 wounded.
The website also quoted him as saying that no political party in the country should have “armed cells”, and that the law enforcement agencies must “perform their duty and disarm all illegal armed groups”.
Oleksiy Byk, a spokesman for Right Sector, said the group would set up as many checkpoints as needed to stop the flow of police reinforcements.
The Right Sector members involved in the violence are thought to have retreated into forest near Lavki.
“No political organisation has the right to establish…criminal groups”, Poroshenko said.
A confrontation between Pravy Sektor and men loyal to a local MP critical of the group appears to have erupted into violence, after which police intervened.
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Regardless of whether this account of what happened in April is accurate, the loyalty of government forces may again be put to the test if the current showdown over the Mukacheve shootout is not resolved peacefully.
