Fears grow as Ukraine rightwing militia puts Kiev in its sights - FT.com
▻http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7925dacc-369c-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html
But fears are growing that Right Sector — the only major volunteer battalion Kiev has not yet managed to bring under regular army control — could turn its fire on the new government itself.
Dmytro Yarosh, Right Sector’s leader, called late last month for a nationwide no-confidence referendum in President Petro Poroshenko. He was addressing a rally in Kiev of up to 5,000 Right Sector activists, angry over what they say is the government’s slow progress in fighting corruption and excessive concessions to Moscow as it attempts to reach a settlement over eastern Ukraine.
“We are an organised revolutionary force that is opening the new phase of the Ukrainian revolution,” Mr Yarosh told the rally.
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Russian officials and media have long demonised Right Sector as neo-Nazis who, they claim, were the real driving force behind Ukraine’s revolution. Moscow media’s obsession led some Ukrainian officials to suggest privately that Right Sector might have been penetrated by Russian intelligence as a subversive “project” aimed at undermining the government.
Now some Ukrainians who previously dismissed the threat posed by Right Sector are growing nervous.
“[Right Sector] have been mainly a problem for Ukraine’s image in the west, but now there is added concern because they have turned against the government,” said Andreas Umland, a German academic based in Kiev who studies the far right. “But they don’t yet have the political support or firepower to topple the government, and they know this.”
Popular support for the group remains low, although a poll found it had risen from 1.8 per cent last October to 5.4 per cent by July.