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                 Ukraine Nationalists: Country Headed for Coup

   by Oleksiy Kuzmenko

   In recent days, the kind of armed violence previously limited to
   Ukraine's beleaguered east came within 30 miles of the country's
   European Union borders.

   In the city of Mukacheve, one person was killed in a Saturday gun fight
   between members of far-right nationalists known as Right Sector and
   security guards connected to a Ukrainian legislator.

   Right Sector, whose own volunteer battalion fights alongside government
   troops in eastern Ukraine, said its members were trying to confront a
   local crime boss and policemen it alleges were involved in large-scale
   smuggling in the region.
   But some witnesses say the shootout involving automatic rifles and
   grenade launchers appears to have been part of a criminal turf war over
   smuggling itself -- particularly the illicit transit of cigarettes into
   EU markets.

   A number of civilians were injured and several police vehicles
   destroyed in the incident, while about a dozen Right Sector militants
   involved in the shootout managed to escape into the nearby mountains,
   evading troops sent to disarm them. Ukrainian officials reported Monday
   that two militants who security forces were closing in on had managed
   to escape by taking hostage a 6-year-old boy, who was later released.

   Following the incident, President Petro Poroshenko called for the
   militants involved in the shootout to be disarmed and detained for an
   unbiased investigation into what happened.
   Right Sector, however, mobilized its members across the country and
   launched protests demanding the removal of the Interior minister and
   officials in Ukraine's western regions. It also called on government
   forces to defy their superiors' orders, and some Right Sector units
   fighting in eastern Ukraine reportedly abandoned their positions to
   join protests in the capital, Kyiv.

   On Monday, Poroshenko discussed the violence in Mukacheve during a
   meeting with senior military and security officials. The Ukrainian
   president's website quoted him as saying the violence was the result of
   a fight for control over smuggling operations and reported that he
   called for "prompt and meaningful actions from law enforcement agencies
   in combating smuggling."
   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."

   Right Sector is essentially Ukraine's largest private army, boasting
   10,000 armed members nationwide. In weeks preceding the incident, the
   group ramped up its anti-government rhetoric in Mukacheve, labeling the
   country's elected government "an inner occupying force" and suggesting
   it should be overthrown.
   In early July, Right Sector gathered several thousand supporters in
   Kyiv for a rally to protest what they called government "terror"
   against nationalists and the lack of reforms in the country, and to
   demand an offensive against pro-Russian militants in the east.

   Right Sector: coup is coming
   Last week, before the Mukacheve incident, VOA asked Right Sector
   spokesman Artem Skoropadsky to comment on the group's rhetoric and
   possible future course of action.

   "If there's a new revolution, Ukraine's President Poroshenko and his
   teammates won't be able to make it out of the country the way the
   previous president [pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych] did,"
   Skoropadsky told VOA. "They can't expect anything other than an
   execution in some dark vault, carried out by a group of young officers
   of Ukraine's army and National Guard."

   Skoropadsky also said his organization is not calling for a coup, but
   that one is inevitable if the government remains deaf to the pleas of
   the volunteer battalions and the population.

   Since last year's Euromaidan demonstrations against the Yanukovych
   government and the start of war in the east, Ukraine has seen a drop in
   its living standards, a currency devaluation, price increases and
   rising unemployment. This has not translated, however, into mass
   anti-government sentiment. According to a recent poll, 32 percent of
   the population would re-elect Petro Poroshenko as president.

   In last year's parliamentary election, Right Sector was unable to win a
   sufficient number of votes to make it into the Rada -- the Ukrainian
   parliament -- as a political party.
   According to Anton Shekhovtsov, a visiting senior fellow at Britain's
   Legatum Institute who researches European radical movements, there is
   only a handful of far-right MPs in the Rada.

   Ultra-nationalists: defenders or curse?

   Andreas Umland, a German political scientist working in Ukraine, agrees
   that Right Sector lacks popular support, telling VOA that it consists
   of "a couple of thousand mainly young men and has limited appeal in
   broader society."

   Likewise, Ivan Yakovina, a reporter with Ukrainian weekly magazine
   Novoe Vremya, says neither the right-wing Ukrainian battalions and
   organizations, nor their political agenda, is very popular.

   "I believe that most Ukrainians, especially in relevant urban areas,
   have little appetite for a new round of instability after the
   revolution, loss of Crimea and the war," he told VOA.

   Adrian Karatnycky of the Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Council said
   via Facebook that "vigilantism and far-right military formations" are
   Ukraine's "curse," and called for its government to launch an
   investigation into Right Sector activities.

   According to Karatnycky, high-ranking Ukrainian officials believe Right
   Sector "is heavily infiltrated by agent provocateurs, including those
   linked to the FSB" -- the Federal Security Service, Russia's main state
   security agency. Right Sector is officially banned in Russia, which has
   long called the organization a threat to Ukraine's stability.

   Dmytro Riznychenko is a Ukrainian far-right blogger and veteran of the
   war in eastern Ukraine who is the spokesman for the Donbas-Ukraine
   battalion, a newly-formed armed unit backed by Kyiv. He told VOA last
   week that Ukraine's nationalists understand they lack popular support
   and thus could eventually try to seize power by force.

   "The only issue is to find the right figure to be the country's
   dictator and savior," he said.

   Riznychenko exemplifies how intertwined Ukraine's military is with
   nationalist organizations. Before joining a volunteer battalion in
   2014, after which he fought and was wounded in the bloody battle of
   Ilovaisk, Riznychenko was a member of C14, which researcher Shekhovtsov
   believes to be a neo-Nazi paramilitary group.

   Riznychenko, however, told VOA his battalion is apolitical.

   Government forces

   Some observers say that despite their aggressive rhetoric, the
   far-right groups do not pose a real threat to the government.

   "While the Right Sector is flexing its muscles in the streets, the
   government is way stronger and feels no need to resort to posturing,"
   Serhiy Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist who is now a
   member of the Rada, told VOA last week.

   Others say it is not clear whether the government could rely on the
   military to quash an attempt by nationalist groups to seize power.
   Indeed, Riznychenko said that the volunteer battalions and the military
   are closely connected and share the same concerns, disagreeing only
   over how to address them.

   Should it come to a face-off between Kyiv and the nationalists, he
   suggested, camaraderie and mutual respect forged in battle will trump
   government directives.

   "In April, the government made an attempt to disarm the Right Sector,"
   Riznychenko told VOA. "Its base was surrounded and artillery was
   pointed at it, [but] rank-and-file government troops defied orders
   after exchanging calls with counterparts in the Right Sector."

   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.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/ukraine-nationalists-say-country-head
   ed-for-coup/2860024.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/ukraine-nationalists-say-country-headed-for-coup/2860024.html