Ukraine Paramilitaries in Hiding After Attack – The New Indian Express
MOSCOW: At least two people were killed and seven injured in fighting that broke out after armed men bearing the insignia of Pravy Sektor, a far-Right paramilitary group, drove into the town of Mukachevo, near the Polish and Hungarian borders, on Saturday.
A confrontation between Pravy Sektor – “Right Sector” – and men loyal to a local MP critical of the group appears to have erupted into violence, after which police intervened. At least two Pravy Sektor fighters were killed in the fight, which also saw two police cars destroyed by grenade launchers.
An unknown number of Pravy Sektor fighters were still believed to be hiding in countryside near the town yesterday evening. Officials have called on the group to surrender or face arrest.
Pravy Sektor, which formed as an alliance of street-fighting nationalist groups, rose to prominence during the Maidan protests of 2013 and 2014.
Dmitro Yarosh, the head of the far-Right group, flew into Mukachevo yesterday. Mr Yarosh was engaged in direct negotiations with Petro Poroshenko, the president, and the head of the SBU, Ukraine’s interior security service. Andrei Tarasenko, a deputy leader of the group, said the Pravy Sektor fighters involved in Saturday’s incident were now “in the mountains”.
“I can’t tell you how many of them are there, we have lost contact,” he told Kyiv-based Hromadske television.
Another Pravy Sektor leader said the group had established a checkpoint on a main road outside Kyiv in order to prevent security services from being sent west to hunt the fugitives.
The claim could not be immediately verified. Mr Yarosh said in a statement on his Facebook page that he would “promote an objective and impartial investigation” into the gun battle in order to avoid “the danger of destroying Ukraine as a unified state”.
But he went on to issue a string of demands, including the arrest of Mikhail Lano, a member of parliament who openly opposes the group, and the resignation of Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s interior minister, along with the entire leadership of the regional police force.
Government special forces reportedly postponed a planned assault on the surrounded fighters on Saturday night to allow negotiations to take place. But in a sign of growing tensions, Pravy Sektor said yesterday that its bases in western Ukraine had been “blockaded” by police and government troops.
The causes of Saturday’s violence are unclear. Pravy Sektor has said its men were attempting to disarm an “illegal armed formation” loyal to Mr Lano.
But Mustafa Nayyem, a Ukrainian MP and investigative journalist who arrived on the scene on Saturday, said the violence was prompted by dispute over control of the contraband cigarette trade. Citing local residents, Mr Nayyem said “all sides in the conflict” had been involved in a profitable cigarette smuggling business that sees between three and five lorries pass through the region’s border crossings en route to Germany and Italy each week.