KIEV, July 3. /TASS/. Ukraine’s justice ministry has refused to register the nationalist organization UNA-UNSO as a political party due to its collaboration with the Nazi, UNA-UNSO leader Konstantin Vinnitsky said on Friday.

"We have been going to the justice ministry with all our documents for a month and a half and everything was all right. But yesterday, (on July 2) we were denied registration, the Ukrainian News agency quoted him as saying. The ministry had substantiated its decision by the fact that UNA-UNSO had collaborated with the Nazi in 1942, Vinnitsky said.

The press service of the Ukrainian justice ministry refused either to confirm or to deny this information.

The UNA-UNSO leader also said his organization had referred a letter to Minister of Justice Pavel Petrenko asking him to either settle this issue or to provide official reasons for the denial. Vinnitsky said that in case UNA-UNSO was not registered as a political party it would organize protest rallies.

UNA-UNSO (Ukrainian National Assembly — Ukrainian People's Self-Defence) is a Ukrainian nationalist radical rightist organization. In March 2014, the Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA), which had acted as a political wing of the organization, became part of the extremist political party Right Sector, which is outlawed in Russia. The Ukrainian People’s Self-Defence (UNSO) continues as a public organization.