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Right Sector defies pledge to join Ukrainian army — presidential adviser

Right Sector is an informal ultra-right extremist group. In March 2014 it was reformed into a political party on the legal and personnel base of the Ukrainian National Assembly party

KIEV, April 29. /TASS/. The volunteer Ukrainian paramilitary force calling itself Right Sector defies its pledge to get integrated with the Ukrainian armed forces, Ukrainian presidential adviser, defense minister’s aide Yuri Biryukov has said on his page in Facebook in the wake of statements by the Right Sector Ukrainian army were trying to disarm its members.

Biryukov recalled there had been attempts to devise an integration formula, but certain problems emerged. "Right Sector units said they were against being diluted within regular army units," he said. At a certain point it was agreed that "their units will not be split and the headquarters of volunteer battalions will be manned by career officers."

Besides, the leader of the Right Sector, parliament member Dmytro Yarosh became an adviser to Ukraine’s General Staff.

"That was three weeks ago," Biryukov said. "Since then some battalion commanders, their deputies, chiefs of the battalions’ headquarters and their deputies kept coming to the General Staff again and again. The mood was getting worse and rhetoric eventually grew into ultimatums."

"Time is ripe to understand and realize that the army must be indivisible, homogenous and a formidable force," the presidential adviser said.

He avoided commenting on the events of the past few hours unfolding around the Right Sectors’ base, adding that he was ignorant of what decisions had been made and who made them.

On Tuesday, the 25th and 95th brigades of Ukraine’s armed forces surrounded the base of the volunteer battalion Right Sector in the village of Velikomikhailovka and demanded they should lay down arms.

Right Sector is an informal ultra-right extremist group. In March 2014 it was reformed into a political party on the legal and personnel base of the Ukrainian National Assembly party (UNA-UNSO).

Russia’s Supreme Court last November declared Right Sector as an extremist organization and outlawed it in Russia.