Saturday 18 July 2020


Ukraine's private militias say Kiev needs them to defend against Moscow

The militias include the far-Right Pravy Sektor and an assortment of rag-tag groups who believe Kiev's new government is too weak to rule in the face of the Russian threat

Major Viktor Kulyk and his son Nikolai
Major Viktor Kulyk and his son Nikolai, pictured at the HQ of the unofficial National Guard in President Yanukovych's old party HQ in Kiev 

Major Viktor Kulyk, the deputy commander of Ukraine's newly-created national guard, is proud to help his country in its hour of need.

At its Kiev headquarters, guards stand on duty in regular military fatigues, while in an operations room inside, a map on the wall shows their units from Lviv in the west through to Donetsk in the east.

Already, they number at least three thousand men - ready to mobilise at a moment's notice, he says, in the event of the feared Russian invasion.

There is, however, just one problem: while Ukraine's new government has indeed started up a new reservist force to defend the country in the wake of the Crimea debacle, Major Kulyk's men are not part of it.

Instead, they are an entirely separate organisation that wants nothing to do with the government - just one of a growing number of private armies that have sprung up since the revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych last month.

Formed during the street fighting that led to his fall, they include Pravy Sektor, the Ukrainian nationalist group whose far-Right leanings have helped Moscow portray the revolution as a Fascist-led coup.

But while Kiev's new, pro-European leaders are now under growing pressure from the West to rein them in, men such as Maj Kulyk are in no mood to take orders from a government they already distrust for losing Crimea.

"The ministry of interior has asked us to disband, but we are not willing to," he said. "It is like asking a man to become a woman, as it is normal that any man wants to protect his homeland. The government gave up Crimea without a shot, and now it is facing further trouble in the east of our country and not doing anything about it."

Known originally as "hundreds" because each unit was made up 100 volunteers, the militias started as self-defence units to protect the crowds from Mr Yanukovych's feared security police. In Kiev's Independence Square, known as the Maidan, photo-montages now celebrate the so-called "Heavenly Hundred" who died when police snipers opened fire during three bloody days in early February.

A month on, though, the militias have become a growing challenge to the new government too. Large numbers of them still parade in formation around the Maidan, armed with clubs and sticks despite the absence of any imminent threat.

Critics say they are also drawing in growing numbers of ne'er-do-wells and the unemployed, prompting fears that yesterday's revolutionary heroes will become tomorrow's organised gangsters.

Indeed, that is a charge already being levelled at Pravy Sektor (Right Sector), the largest of all the militias, whose followers claim to have access to weapons looted from government armouries during Mr Yanukovych's overthrow.

On Monday, police shot dead one of Pravy Sektor's senior leaders, Okeksander Muzychko, as they tried arrest him in a cafe in the western city of Rivne.

Police claimed that Mr Muzychko, a heavily-set, crop-haired figure known as Sasha the White, opened fire first. They insist his arrest was do with criminal "banditry" rather than his political activities.

But his death has infuriated his supporters. Pravy Sektor's leader, Dmytro Yarosh, plans to run in May's presidential elections. On Thursday and Friday, they marched on the parliament, threatening to attack it unless the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, resigned. As the group surrounded the building, police were nowhere to be seen - a sign of how weak law and order has become in the wake of the revolution.

The new government fears it will be tarred with the same brush as the Yanukovych regime if it engages in large-scale street confrontations with the revolution's putative defenders. However, images of Privy Sektor's paramilitaries besieging Ukraine's seat of power fit straight into Moscow's narrative of a country now held to ransom by fascists.

The European Union is already deeply worried that the situation is playing into the Kremlin's hands. The Telegraph has learnt that two recent EU communiqués on Ukraine were supposed to include a clause demanding "the dissolution of paramilitary structures". Officials then deleted the clause, because of fears it would provide a "propaganda coup" to President Vladimir Putin.

Launched two weeks ago in the wake of Russia's takeover of Crimea, the government's plan for a new national guard was intended partly to draw in the self-defence groups. It aims to create a 20,000 strong force with proper weapons training, buttressing the country's run-down military and operating as a Swiss-style citizens' army in the event of Russia invading.

But the government is playing catch-up with Maj Kulyk and other militia leaders, who began forming their version of the national guard around a month before. Including volunteers from Pravy Sektor, it operates out of Mr Yanukovych's old political headquarters in a Kiev suburb, where the flags of Ukraine and the European Union now fly in his office. A vast, imposing party boss's desk is now the only memento of Mr Yanukovych's presence.

Yet for a group that aspires to defend Ukraine from a mighty neighbour like Russia, the building's new occupants have something of a "Dad's Army" feel to them.

Major Kulyk, 55, who is the deputy commander, wears a British army uniform bought in a second-hand shop, as does his 14-year-old son Nikolai, who has also enlisted. Maj Kulyk readily admits, too, that at a time of national emergency, one army would be better than two.

"The problem is that the government's new national guard is being trained by the security police - those same police who were killing protesters a month ago," he said. "Our followers won't accept that. But ideally, yes, it would be better if we all fought as one right now."

Additional reporting by Bruno Waterfield

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