The volunteer
battalion Right Sector is ready to join the Ukrainian Army as a
separate division under the command of Right Sector leader Dmytro
Yarosh.
“We can
only agree on ‘legalization’ in one situation: if the volunteer
Ukrainian corps remains a whole structure and if we continue
reporting directly to our leader Dmytro Yarosh,” Right Sector
press officer Artem Skoropadsky told reporters on Friday.
“We want
everything to stay as it is now: we are now cooperating with the
Defense Ministry and the Ukrainian Security Service,”
Skoropadsky said.
“There
should be no direct command. We don’t want any generals sent to Right
sector to command it,” Skoropadsky said.
Responding to
a question on whether negotiations are
being conducted with Defense Ministry officials on the inclusion of
Right Sector in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in this format, he
answered in the affirmative: “Negotiations are still being
conducted and I don’t know what is being offered there as of this
morning.”
Skoropadsky
said offers to join the Ukrainian Army have been made to Right Sector
before, but those offers were “various,” including those
that were unacceptable, specifically, “the offer to disband the
force and go to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces through district
military commissariats” or to join the Ukrainian National Guard.
Skoropadsky
said “the idea of disbanding the volunteer Ukrainian corps Right
sector is also unacceptable. Because we have groups, including
intelligence groups, subversive groups, attack groups, where people
are selected. It seems to me it will be very bad for the country’s
defense capability to disband them now and make them ordinary
privates,” he said.
The Right
Sector spokesman also believes the proposal on Right Sector’s
integration in the structure of the Ukrainian National Guard is
unacceptable “because the National Guard is a police force, and
we demand full-fledged lustration in the Interior Ministry.”
Vladyslav
Selezniov, acting spokesman for the Ukrainian General Staff, said on
March 26 members of the volunteer battalion Right Sector had been
offered to join the Ukrainian army, but the battalion had not made a
decision yet.
