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About three thousand Right Sector supporters rally in central Kiev

Earlier, the Right Sector announced its plans to call a referendum on a vote of no-confidence in the Ukrainian authorities, the organization’s head, Dmytro Yarosh said
Right Sector supporters TASS Archive/EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY
Right Sector supporters
© TASS Archive/EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY

KIEV, Jul y 21 /TASS/. About 3,000 Right Sector supporters have gathered for a rally in Kiev.

Camouflaged radicals are planning to march from Institutskaya Street to Kiev’s Independence Square. They demand the resignation of Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and the lustration of the head of the Trans-Carpathian regional department of internal affairs. The protesters are holding the flags of Ukraine and the red and black banners of the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA). Fighters of the Right Sector reserve battalions have arrived in Kiev.

"We left the places of dislocation shortly after receiving an order from (Dmytro) Yarosh (the Right Sector) leader. Only the fighters of the reserve battalions have come here. The rest are on the front," a representative of the 7th Khmelnitsky battalion said.

Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh has promised that the march will be peaceful.

Earlier, the Right Sector announced its plans to call a referendum on a vote of no-confidence in the Ukrainian authorities, the organization’s head, Dmytro Yarosh, said on Tuesday after an All-Ukrainian Congress of the Right Sector held in Kiev.

"The first thing is no-confidence in the ruling power, to all branches of power; people should express their attitude to what’s going on in the state," the leader of the far right extremist organization which is banned in Russia said.

Yarosh also called for imposing a blockade on the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine.

"A total and all-embracing blockade of the occupied territories is necessary," Yarosh stressed.

The Right Sector has also threatened the Ukraine authorities with parallel elections.

"The authorities should know that if they do not suit the people, they should go. If we fail to call a referendum, we are going to create our own Central Electoral Commission and vote separately across Ukraine," Yarosh said.

"We can judge whom the authorities fear most and whom they consider to be the main enemy by what forces President Poroshenko mobilized to crack down on several Right Sector fighters near Mukachevo (Western Ukraine): dozens of vehicles and hundreds of Interior Ministry officers; riot police, the National Guard as well as some Ukrainian army units," the Right Sector, which is banned in Russia as an extremist organization, said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Some time ago, Yarosh said that time had come to think about Poroshenko’s resignation and the disbandment of the government and Verkhovna Rada (parliament).

US Ambassador to Ukraine Jeoffrey Pyatt, who visited Uzhgorod, Western Ukraine, on Tuesday condemned the Right Sector’s actions in Ukraine’s Trans-Carpathian region and said that the use of force and weapons was the prerogative of the Ukrainian government, army and law enforcers.