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Former head of Ukraine’s Right Sector declares plans for new oppositional group

According to the nationalist leader, two Right Sector battalions and a medical battalion will constitute the backbone of a future Ukrainian voluntary army affiliated with the newly-founded movement
Former leader of Ukraine’s extremist Right Sector group, outlawed in Russia, Dmytro Yarosh Zurab Dzhavakhadze/ITAR-TASS
Former leader of Ukraine’s extremist Right Sector group, outlawed in Russia, Dmytro Yarosh
© Zurab Dzhavakhadze/ITAR-TASS

KIEV, December 28. /TASS/. Former leader of Ukraine’s extremist Right Sector group, outlawed in Russia, Dmytro Yarosh, has declared he leaves the organization with an intention to create another oppositional movement, as follows from his own statement on the Right Sector’s website.

"My team and I have made a decision to withdraw from the Right Sector to launch a qualitatively new national-state-patriotic movement, which will be able to build an independent and united state," the press-service quotes him as saying.

Yarosh declared his intention to convene the constituent congress of a new organization in February, adding that it would be in opposition to the current authorities.

Also, he said the 5th and 8th battalions of the Right Sector and the medical battalion would constitute the backbone of a future Ukrainian voluntary army, affiliated with the newly-founded movement. Cooperation with the government-run law enforcement agencies would be "the widest possible."

Right Sector is an ultra-right extremist group, which in March 2014 was converted into a political party on the legal and personnel basis of the Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA-UNSO). In April 2014 the organization’s leader Dmytro Yarosh declared the creation of a special battalion Donbas "for restoring order to the Donetsk Region." In July a volunteer Ukrainian corps began to be created. It took an active part in the military crackdown on civilians in the southeast of Ukraine. The militants are heavily armed. International human rights organizations hold them responsible for kidnappings, illegal arrests, beatings, robberies and killings of civilians. Russia’s Supreme Court declared Right Sector an extremist organization and outlawed its activity in Russia.