You're reading: Ukraine Security Service: Police handled Right Sector departure from Kyiv hotel on their own

Kyiv - The Security Service of Ukraine has said that its Alfa special operations unit was not involved in the events on Tuesday morning, when members of the Right Sector ultra-nationalistic group vacated their headquarters, located in the Dnipro hotel in the center of Kyiv.

The service also confirmed that the person suspected of opening fire in Kyiv’s Khreschatyk Street on Monday evening is currently being held at its pre-trial detention center.

“Alfa did not work there. The police are handling this issue. The Security Service of Ukraine did not take anyone anywhere either,” a service spokesman told Interfax-Ukraine.

“The police coped with the situation on their own. The only way how we helped them was to place the main suspect in our pre-trial detention center for his own security pending trial,” the spokesman said.

On March 31, a Right Sector member went on a shooting spree near the Dnipro hotel, wounding three people, among them Kyiv city administration deputy head Bohdan Dubas. The suspect was subsequently detained and placed in the Ukrainian Security Service’s pre-trial detention center.

In response to the incident, police special operations units encircled the Right Sector’s headquarters, based at the Dnipro hotel.

Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, for his part, said on Tuesday morning that Right Sector representatives were leaving the Dnipro hotel unarmed.

“They got on their buses and headed to one of the camps outside of the city escorted by officers of the Ukrainian Security Service. Interior Ministry experts have already started to examine the vacated building,” Avakov said.