You're reading: Ready To Fight: Right Sector sets up camp in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast

POKROVSKE, Ukraine - Located on land once controlled by the Zaporizhian Sich, a Cossack republic from the 16th to 18th centuries, the rear base of the pro-Ukrainian Right Sectorr's military unit in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast fits the place quite well.

Just like the Zaporizhian Cossacks, fighters of the Right Sector’s Ukrainian Volunteer Corps have problems with legal recognition. While the Cossacks were split into independent ones and those “registered” under the aegis of Polish kings, Right Sector volunteers have no legal status.

Its volunteer corps has been involved in a long-running dispute with authorities over the issue. Recently, relations between the unit and the army’s top brass have improved but disagreements remain.

The base, located in a forest near the village of Pokrovske, is not far from Hulyaipole, the capital of anarchist Nestor Makhno’s Free Territory in 1918-1921 – another historical association that Right Sector fighters cherish.

The volunteer unit’s 5th battalion is based in a former Soviet children’s summer camp. The Right Sector’s fearsome reputation is offset by posters left from the camp and children’s pictures with good luck wishes sent to fighters and posted on the walls of the base’s cafeteria.

The Right Sector has proposed joining the military as an autonomous unit with its own commanders. But the government has insisted that they be integrated into existing units.

The disagreements reached a fever pitch in late April, when regular army units surrounded the Right Sector base, and its spokesman Artem Skoropadsky said at a rally in Kyiv that the Presidential Administration would be “burned to the ground” if the authorities continued their pressure. Another dangerous moment was when a soldier at a checkpoint in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast shot his rifle in the air when Alla Megel, head of the corps’ information department, passed through it.

The General Staff attributed the encirclement of the base to military exercises but the Right Sector said the aim was to scare the unit.

The tense standoff cooled by early May, when army checkpoints around the Right Sector base were removed, and the authorities agreed that the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps would join the army as a separate unit. On May 14, Right Sector leader and lawmaker Dmytro Yarosh submitted to parliament a bill to legalize the corps.

Megel and the commander of the corps’ fifth battalion, who goes by the nom-de-guerre Chorny, downplay the conflict. “How can we settle a conflict that did not exist?” Megel told the Kyiv Post.
However, fortifications built by the men to ward off a potential attack by the regular army indicate that the conflict was a serious one.

Right Sector members emphasize that they have no disagreements with rank-and-file soldiers and officers of the regular army. “Right Sector fighters were in the same trenches with them,” Megel said.

It is the generals and the authorities that they disagree with. Fighters of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps distrust President Petro Poroshenko’s administration and the General Staff and accuse them of mismanaging the country and failing to defend it from combined Russian-separatist forces.

A Right Sector fighter paints a souvenir mortar shell ahead of an auction to earn money for the unit on May 17 in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

Right Sector soldiers argue that they derive their mandate directly from the Constitution and the right to protect their homeland from foreign aggression.

“The Ukrainian Volunteer Corps doesn’t need to be legalized,” Megel said. “It’s tangible, and it exists. In society, it has already been legalized.”

She believes the government’s description of the conflict as an anti-terrorist operation is illegal because it has surpassed its legal definition in time and scale, and de facto it is a war.

“If there is a war, we are legal. We are partisans,” she said. “Either the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps is illegal, or the anti-terrorist operation is.”

The authorities have insisted that all units without a legal status be removed from the frontline. In April the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps withdrew from Pisky, a key village strategically located next to Donetsk Airport.

However, Right Sector fighters are attached to regular army units and the Aidar, Dnipro and Azov volunteer battalions, Megel said.

“Withdrawing all of them would be like taking all nails out of a structure,” she said. “It’s impossible to withdraw them.”

Right Sector fighters with the noms-de-guerre of Engineer and Odin believe the situation in Pisky has significantly deteriorated after the Right Sector withdrew, and now it’s much harder to defend it. If combined Russian-separatist forces seize Pisky and other nearby locations, they might be able to use Donetsk Airport’s airstrip for aviation.

Despite the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps’ small size and lack of heavy weaponry compared to regular army units, it played a key role in Pisky due to its higher motivation and ability to act without bureaucratic restrictions, Engineer and Odin believe.

“The situation in Pisky is critical,” Engineer said. “Most mobilized soldiers don’t want to fight. They were torn away from their families.”

Moreover, Right Sector fighters often acted as spotters, adjusting fire on enemy targets, and “soldiers complain that they were left without eyes,” Megel said.

But Chorny, the commander of the 5th battalion, praised regular army units, saying they were able to protect Pisky and other positions.

He also complained that journalists had “created a Mecca out of Pisky” and said that there were other hot spots on the frontline that lack media attention, including Spartak and the Butovskaya Mine north of Donetsk.

The authorities’ orders for Right Sector fighters to leave Pisky came as critics accused them of lacking discipline and professionalism but they say the opposite is true. Alcohol is prohibited at the base, and the corps has gradually stepped up army-style discipline.

Right Sector members also say that the corps has advantages compared with the regular army because its decision-making process is not thwarted by bureaucratic hurdles. “We can afford to do what the regular army can’t,” Chorny argued.

Another difference is much higher motivation. “Fighters clearly understand what they’re fighting for,” Megel said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].