The Kremlin has a poster boy for the propaganda war it is waging against Ukraine’s new government and used to justify its occupation of Crimea. His name is Dmytro Yarosh.
Yarosh is who Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have in mind when they claim that “neo-fascists” and “extremists” in Kyiv were responsible for the overthrow of former President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 21. These same “extremists,” they say, are also endangering the lives of millions of ethnic Russians here, even though there is no evidence to back up the claims.
Yarosh led the Right Sector organization that fought pitched battles against police in the capital and played a significant role in the success of the EuroMaidan Revolution. Now that Yarosh is going into politics, announcing his candidacy for the May 25 presidential election, his views will be scrutinized. But even his critics say that the Kremlin claims of his neo-Nazi or extremist views are grossly exaggerated, if not outright false. In fact, Yarosh supports Ukraine’s closer integration with the European Union, which upholds the values of democracy and tolerance. He also said he categorically opposes xenophobia and anti-Semitism.
This week Russian authorities charged him with incitement to terrorism for allegedly appealing to a Chechen warlord to attack Russia over the country’s invasion of Crimea. The Moscow Basmanny Court arrested him in absentia on March 12.
Amid the chaos that engulfed Kyiv in February, Yarosh, flanked by a group of men clad in bulletproof vests and puffing on a cigarette inside a dank fifth-floor office of the Trade Unions building overlooking Independence Square, kept his cards close to his chest when asked about his political ambitions.
“We can talk about this only in the case that we win and change the government. In the rules of this system…I don’t see it being possible,” he told the Kyiv Post on Feb. 11
Now a month later, trading in his forest green military fatigues for a charcoal suit, white shirt and blue tie, Yarosh does see it as possible.
“I will run for president,” said the 42-year-old husband, father of two and newly minted deputy director of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council during a briefing inside Hotel Ukraine on March 8, with armed guards standing at his sides.
His announcement and appointment came two weeks after Yanukovych, now a fugitive wanted for his alleged role in the mass murder of dozens of anti-government protesters at the hands of police during more than three months of demonstrations, fled the country and was overthrown, and a new government put in power.
Yarosh, a stout and scruffy-faced man with a teacher’s college degree who hails from the eastern Ukrainian city of Dniprodzerzhynsk and has trained paramilitary troops for more than 20 years, made a name for himself during the EuroMaidan Revolution as the leader of Right Sector, a collection of several right-wing paramilitary and youth organizations created on Nov. 20, which includes White Hammer and Stepan Bandera’s Trident.
The group was the backbone of violent clashes with police on Hrushevskoho Street on Jan. 19-22, which Yarosh said stemmed from frustration with political gridlock. And it played a role – though not a leading one – alongside Maidan Self-Defense units during clashes with police in the government district of Kyiv and on Institutska Street on Feb. 18-20, when dozens of protesters and several police officers were killed.
Political experts say his and the Right Sector’s entrance into politics is no surprise, given the notoriety they received during the civil uprising, and that many Ukrainians view them as a fresh face in a government fraught with old ones.
Outlining his platform during his March 8 press conference, Yarosh said: “We stand for a complete reboot of the government and a new quality of Ukrainian politics. Right Sector will have its own place and will offer an alternative path for Ukraine’s future.
Yarosh said he supports an association agreement with the EU, but not full EU membership. He wants to focus on change in the Interior Ministry and reinstatement of Ukrainian as the sole official state language.
But Moscow is alarmed by Yarosh’s Right Sector and their nationalist roots, which loom large in its military takeover of Crimea.
Since Russian troops took over the Black Sea peninsula on Feb. 28, Kremlin-controlled media have portrayed Yarosh as one of the “neo-fascists” and “anti-Semites” who overthrew Yanukocyh in what Putin considers to be an illegal coup.
He’s not alone among Kremlin targets. The nationalist Svoboda party, whose members won key government posts, is also a favorite target of Russian propaganda and Putin’s pretext of needing to protect Crimean’s ethnic Russian majority.
“We’ve seen lots of people, you know, with those signs… armbands with swastikas,” Putin said during a recent press conference, referring to members of Right Sector.
But Yarosh’s and other Right Sector members’ public statements suggest the group does not share the opposition Svoboda party’s nationalist goals of the primacy of ethnic Ukrainians. The group considers Armenian Serhiy Nihoyan and Belarussian Mykhailo Zhyznievsky, two protesters who died from gunshot wounds after a police assault on demonstrators on Jan. 22, as heroes.
Moreover, during his press conference on March 8, Yarosh said the Right Sector “is against xenophobia and anti-Semitism, and the actions of the Right Sector are the best proof of that.”
Backing up his comments was Chief Rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine Moshe Reuven Azman, who said during a briefing at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center on March 12 “there is no anti-Semitism in Ukraine.”
“We should draw a distinction between nationalism and Nazism. Nationalism is loving one’s own people, and Nazism is hating others,” the rabbi said.
Yarosh is not likely to win more than about 5 percent in the May 25 election, said Olexiy Haran, a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
“We understand, of course, that he has no chance,” Haran said. “But what is important will be to listen to his messages, and to see how they will be used by the Russian media to discredit the new government in Ukraine.”
Recent polls show billionaire businessman and lawmaker Petro Poroshenko leading all presidential hopefuls, followed by former world boxing champion turned politician Vitali Klitschko, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was recently released from prison after being convicted of abuse of office and serving more than two years of a seven-year sentence in a case widely viewed as politically motivated, and Sergey Tigipko, a former national bank chairman and Party of Regions lawmaker.
Regardless of whether he wins, Yarosh is likely to remain on the political scene, Haran says, perhaps replacing Svoboda, which has moved from the far-right nearer to a more central position on the political spectrum, as the new face of Ukrainian nationalism.
Svoboda evolved and began behaving responsibly,” Haran said. “Right Sector could take the support of the radical electorate, and (Yarosh) could say “we are representing the new generation of nationalists.’”
Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected], or on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
