The Fascists Are Coming, the Fascists Are Coming!

KIEV, Ukraine — To hear Russian President Vladimir Putin tell it, the Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector is made up of racist, anti-Semitic, violent thugs hellbent on dragging their country into civil war. What’s more, according to the Kremlin, the group is the puppet-master pulling the strings of the Kiev government. "There’s no state control over public order, and the so-called Right Sector calls the tune, the group that has resorted to terror and intimidation," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a news conference on March 8.

Even after the group’s spectacular failure in the May 25 presidential election, the Russian authorities continue using Right Sector as a scaremongering tool. On May 30, Russian security services said they arrested four members of Right Sector who were planning terrorist attacks in Crimea, the formerly Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in March. (According to Kyiv Post, the four men had never been members of the group.)

And the scare tactics have proved effective, with a widespread belief in Ukraine’s east that "fascists" were controlling the Kiev government, said Alina Polyakova, a Swiss-based expert on far-right movements in Ukraine.

But sipping on Ukrainian cognac and apple juice at a restaurant in Kiev’s hip Podil neighborhood, Artem Skoropadsky, the far-right group’s boyish press secretary, clad in a hipster uniform of a plaid button-up shirt, shorts, a baseball cap, and Converse sneakers, said the group has been misunderstood. Sure, he said, Right Sector had a few bad apples. The group, though, was open to all nationalities, races, and religions. "When we say, ‘Glory to the Nation,’ we mean the political nation, not the ethnic one," Skoropadsky said. "If you move to Ukraine," he continued, gesturing toward me, "and express love and support for the Ukrainian nation, you can be part of it," he said, adding that the group’s members include ethnic Jews, Poles, Russians, Greeks, and Armenians. Skoropadsky himself is a 33-year-old Russian expat, who prefers to speak in his mother tongue rather than in Ukrainian.

Right Sector was founded as an alliance of far-right groups during the anti-government protests that started on Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti square in November and eventually led to the ouster of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. The organizations that joined Right Sector included the ultranationalist and paramilitary Trident, as well as White Hammer, a vocally racist and anti-immigration group, which has since been ousted from the alliance for propagating racist slogans. They were key players in the defense of the Maidan during brutal clashes with the police, leading the fighting in the bloody Hrushevskoho Street riots on Jan. 19. Right Sector has branded itself as the "defenders of the Maidan," though other activists have questioned the extent of the group’s involvement in protecting the site throughout the revolution’s entire duration.

Today, the group is trying to improve its public image as it tries to enter Ukraine’s chaotic new political scene. On May 22, just three days before Ukraine held its presidential election, the group was formally registered as a political party with the Ukrainian Justice Ministry. It didn’t do very well. While far-right parties across Europe won a series of victories in the May 22 to 25 European Parliament elections, Dmytro Yarosh, the Right Sector’s presidential candidate, won a mere 1 percent of the vote in Ukraine’s presidential election, held at the same time on May 25. Petro Poroshenko, a moderate billionaire chocolate magnet, won in a landslide.

"The role of the Right Sector has been extremely exaggerated, on purpose, by Ukrainian security forces that were associated with Yanukovych," said Olexiy Haran, professor of political science at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Experts agree that the group owes its popularity to Russian propaganda, which tried to build a public case for the Russian annexation of Crimea and the demonization of Kiev by painting the Right Sector as a powerful neo-Nazi force determined to take over Ukraine. According to a survey by an online database of Russian media sources, Right Sector was the second-most mentioned political group in Russian mass media in 2014, surpassed only by United Russia, the party of Putin.

During the May 25 Ukrainian presidential election, Russian state TV took the disinformation campaign so far that an anchor was visibly perplexed when she had to announce that Right Sector’s Yarosh was on track to win the election, with 37 percent of the vote. The channel displayed a screen shot of what appeared to be the Ukrainian Central Election Commission’s website, RFE/RL reported. The anchor admitted that the results were "strange."

"Kremlin propaganda spreads a lot of lies about us. They are telling everyone that we are anti-Semites, neo-fascists, and this is not true," said Skoropadsky, emphasizing that it is Russia that is the "classic imperial fascist regime."

Skoropadsky, a Moscow native, left Russia in 2005 because he believed that Putin was building an authoritarian state, while Ukraine, which had just undergone the 2004 democratic Orange Revolution, had a "European future." Before becoming an activist and a spokesperson for Right Sector, Skoropadsky was a journalist for Kommersant, a Russian-owned daily, where he covered politics in the broad sense of the word, "not the parliament, but the meetings outside the parliament."

The organization’s leaders have repeatedly tried to distance themselves from accusations of racism by, for instance, telling the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine that they reject anti-Semitism. The Israeli Embassy said in a statement that the two had established a hotline to prevent anti-Semitic provocations. "Dmitry Yarosh stressed that Right Sector will oppose all [racist] phenomena, especially anti-Semitism, with all legitimate means," the statement said.

In addition to prominence stemming from Russian propaganda, part of Right Sector’s public prominence may come from the group’s knack for promoting its own brand. Polyakova said that the group has exaggerated its presence in the east and has been "surprisingly very careful" in avoiding public relations mishaps, contrary to the more established nationalist Svoboda party, whose members have a long track record of promoting anti-Semitism and frequently using anti-Semitic slurs.

Although it may seem to be reinventing its public image, Right Sector remains true to its ultranationalist, far-right roots. Its logos are sleek, as if created by a graphic designer, Polyakova said, but the black-and-red colors, immediately evocative of the Nazi swastika, are "problematic." The group strives to carry the legacy of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, a nationalist
umbrella party from the interwar period, and Stepan Bandera, a complicated Ukrainian hero, celebrated in western Ukraine and condemned in the country’s east, Russia, and Poland as a Nazi collaborator. Like the prewar organization, Right Sector maintains a two-pronged structure, with a military and political arm, and champion nationalist slogans of a "Greater" or "United" Ukraine.

While the Right Sector may be pro-European, Skoropadsky said, it stands for a certain kind of Europe. "There are certain things in the European Union that we do not accept," he said, like same-sex marriage, abortion, and assisted suicide, which he said were found in "classic liberal democracies" like France or Denmark. He said that the group’s members feel closer to "Europe of the Polish kind" — conservative, traditional — than "Europe of the Danish kind."

Skoropadsky said they are not for Ukraine’s immediate accession into the European Union or NATO. "We need to clean up the country first," he said, rolling a cigarette. The group wants to erase any traces of the old regime’s policies and apparatchiks within governmental structures.

The current government is not living up to its mandate, Skoropadsky said, but because the politicians in power were fighting alongside the Right Sector on the "barricades of the Maidan," the group plans to use parliamentary, not revolutionary, methods as long as it is possible. The group is, however, worried about the return of what was worst about the Yanukovych regime: corruption and rogue law enforcement.

Skoropadsky, with his penchant for grand statements, assured that if Ukraine falls back into old patterns and Ukraine’s people rise up once again, the Right Sector will be on the front line, as the "avant-garde of the revolution." With a 1 percent support rate among those same people of Ukraine, standing at their helm might be a more difficult task than the nationalists would like.

For now, however, the organization is preparing for a different front line — the one in the country’s east. "Right Sector is an army first, and a party second," said Skoropadsky, who had just come back from a training base that the organization runs 60 miles from Kiev. The group had announced a mobilization effort when Russian forces entered the Ukrainian region of Crimea in March, and Skoropadsky claims 10,000 people signed up to join Right Sector forces. How many of them have actually participated in the training in the organization’s bases around the country remains unclear. Experts have the number of combat-ready Right Sector members at 300 to 500, a tiny fraction of what the group claims, according to a Foreign Affairs article.

Skoropadsky said more experienced Right Sector activists, some with a military background, teach the volunteers how to shoot, take over and occupy buildings, and throw grenades — lofty and hard-to-believe claims given that, as he admitted, the group does not have weapons of its own and the training is conducted with toy guns.

"These nationalist groups have been doing this for many years," said Polyakova. "They organize these paramilitary summer camps as part of their organizational agenda."

After their training, the volunteers are sent to the areas in turmoil. "Just as we were at the front at the Maidan, we are in the east and in the south," said Skoropadsky. Again, it is difficult to assess how many Right Sector members have ventured to those parts of the country, though some reports of armed volunteers from the organization in those regions have surfaced online.

The Right Sector’s funding is donation-based. One of its fundraising locations is its headquarters on Kiev’s Maidan, the dilapidated site of the recent protests. The transparent box for donations held very few hryvnia bills, perhaps enough to buy a few toy guns. Right Sector members idly sat around. "We are waiting for the aggressor," said Volodymyr, who did not give his last name. The unit’s commander stood by the entrance to the headquarters, located by Kiev’s central post office. Leaning on the door in his New England Patriots hat, he sipped coffee out of a large mug. "We are a military organization," he said, "preparing men for war." For the moment, they seem anything but.