MOSCOW, July 13. /TASS/. The recent developments in Ukraine’s western city of Mukachevo demonstrate Kiev’s inability to control extremist armed groups, speaker of the People’s Assembly (parliament) of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Andrey Purgin said on Monday.
"The Kiev authorities have never had full control over nationalist armed groups," the Donetsk News Agency quoted him as saying. "It was not control, it was an agreement between the state machine and extremists whose actions were meant to intimidate political opponents and the regime’s enemies beyond the legal framework."
Purgin noted that the Right Sector, a Ukrainian extremist organization outlawed in Russia, and other radical groups had already demonstrated in Donbas their inability to maintain a civilized dialogue. "Their methods of ‘dialogue’ are well known to people living in the former Donetsk and Luhansk regions which are now controlled by the Ukrainian army. They are known in other places too," he said. "But such flagrant effrontery — people in Ukraine saw for the first time."
On Saturday, July 11, gunmen of the Right Sector extremist group, which is banned in Russia, opened fire from small arms on their opponents while discussing the "redistribution of spheres of influence" in Mukachevo. The extremists later opened fire from rifles, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers on police who arrived at the scene. They destroyed several police vehicles and also set on fire a traffic police checkpoint and a petrol station. As a result, three persons were killed and 11 more were wounded. Some of the gunmen were later blocked in a wooded area near the city. The Right Sector says two of its gunmen were killed and four wounded. Prosecutors described the incident as a terrorist attack.