UPDATE: Ukraine’s Right Sector sets up road checkpoints outside Kyiv – read on …
Police officers secure the area near the western Ukrainian city of Mukachevo Sunday, July 12, 2015. (AP Photo)
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Armed ‘Right Sector’ fighters clash with local MP’s security team in west Ukraine
Ukraine’s far-right volunteer paramilitary group Right Sector have set up road checkpoints outside of Kyiv to block any police units heading to the scene of a deadly shootout hundreds of kilometers away, in the western city of Mukacheve.
An armed standoff between law enforcement officers and Right Sector fighters continued throughout Sunday – the two sides blaming each other for opening fire on each other fire. Accounts of what exactly happened vary. However, Ukrainian news agency UNIAN reported the fighters initially clashed with a security team loyal to local MP Mykhailo Lano, a former member of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions – a man accused by fighters of funnelling contraband into the country.
The organisation main representative also threatened to deploy at least 18 of its reserve battalions to the country’s presidential administration in the Ukrainian capital, unless Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and top police officials in the Zakarpattia region were fired.
Protests by small groups of supporters and members of the Right Sector have been held across Ukraine, including here in Kyiv, where several hundred people gathered outside the presidential administration building demanding the resignation of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Demonstrations also formed in other parts of the country, including here in the eastern city of Kharkiv and the western city of Ternopil.
Read other materials on Mukacheve incident:
Ukrainian military filmed travelling towards ‘Right Sector’ standoff scene
Armed ‘Right Sector’ standoff in western Ukraine
And this is the scene of the gun battle – while this was filmed, the Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh was holding direct talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the chief of the Ukraine’s Security Service to peacefully resolve the standoff in western Ukraine
Read also UT Exclusive: Russian citizen fights with Ukraine’s Right Sector battalion
Right Sector played a big role in Kyiv street protests in 2014, that toppled former Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovich, setting off a confrontation with Russia and sparking the worst Russia-West crisis since the end of the Cold War.
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