Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard

18:46:38
30/07/2017

life.ru

The largest nationalist parties of Ukraine — “Svoboda”, “Right Sector”, and “National Corpus” — can integrate into the Rada in future elections. In this case the nationalists will be able to create a faction in parliament.

“We have really and truly united around ideologies… And I do not exclude that we can jointly go to elections, because we have an understanding on many issues… We ripened to the fact that we can coordinate actions and cooperate,” said the permanent leader of “Svoboda” Oleg Tyahnybok in an interview.

Synchronously in the Ukrainian media fresh data of a sociological survey appeared. Sociologists stated that “the largest political forces are losing the support of Ukrainians who do not want to vote neither for Poroshenko, Tymoshenko, nor for any of the former regionals” inside the “Opposition Bloc”.

Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Fatherland” (11.2% of the respondents intending to take part in the vote), the “Bloc of Petro Poroshenko” (9.3%), “Opposition Bloc” (8.4%), the “Civil Position” party (8.3%), the “For Life” party of Vadim Rabinovich (7.7%), “Radical Party” of Oleg Lyashko (7.3%), and “Samopomich” of the Lvov mayor Andrey Sadoviy (5.8%) can break the five-percent barrier in voting, if it took place in the nearest future. The rating of “People’s Front” of Arseny Yatsenyuk and Aleksandr Turchynov fell by up to 1.7%.

The chances of “Svoboda”, which in 2012-2014 had in the Verkhovna Rada a faction of 38 deputies, is nowadays even less than in 2014 — then the party collected 4.71% of votes, but now only 4.3% of voters are ready to support it.

Also “Right Sector” became weaker, receiving in 2014 1.80% of votes, and now 0.6%. This is partly connected to Dmitry Yarosh leaving the party at the end of 2015 – he was twisted by the media, and thus created with his supporters the “Governmental Initiative of Yarosh”, (now 1.7% would vote for him), and partly to the general disorder of the organization. The recently created far-right party “National Corpus” of Andrey Biletsky would collect 0.3% of the vote, which with its rather feeble media twisting looks rather like a success.

At the same time the united list of nationalists, after having summarized the aforementioned sympathies, could collect 5.2% and break the barrier in the Verkhovna Rada — and information itself about this would already attract to nationalists more support than they have now, when to vote for them means to “discard” your vote.

“National Corpus” looks especially important in this alliance, as it is on the rise and gains new votes, whereas “Right Sector” and “Svoboda” are in stagnation and lose them.

In addition, it is precisely “Azov” members who can become the main source of personnel for propaganda in regions of the southeast of Ukraine. As Life already reported in 2016, at the end of August, 2015, alongside the regiment the public structure under the name “Azov Civil Corpus” was created, which, by March, 2016, created its branches in all regions of Ukraine.

“‘Azov’ is a militarized organization, all members are divided into tens and hundreds,” said a representative of the organization, describing the nature of its structure. “Discipline is iron there. If the commander says to come to ‘full readiness’ at eight in the morning, you are obliged to come on the dot, and to be equipped. For example, to have on you a balaclava, a helmet, a respirator, and a nearby weapon — a bludgeon or a stick. It is also necessary to flawlessly and without excessive questions be ready to execute in the tens any orders of the commander.”

If to read Ukrainian media and social networks, it is well noticeable that activist who were hired in the ranks of Civil Corpus from among nationalists and football ultras, headed by veterans of the ATO, they are constantly ‘brought for tasks’ – to processions, pickets, motor rallies, patrol of streets, etc. There are no ‘phantoms’ there, on the contrary, all activists can be instantly “locked and loaded” and transferred to the needed place both for street propaganda and for protection carried out by them or allies of mass actions.

Since then the number of the Civil Corpus and the “National Corpus” created on its base has only grown.

“Already now Civil Corpus is one of the most extensive networks of activists across Ukraine,” reported Biletsky on October 4th, 2016, to the Fokus publication. “If to take all, including supporters who appear at actions, about 10,000 people can be gathered. And it doesn’t relate at all to the guys who are fighting in the ‘Azov’ regiment now.”

Following them, Azov members begun to build a network in other settlements.

“At the beginning I would like it so that in every city we have 10-15 reliable people,” said the head of “National Corpus” in the Lugansk region Vladislav Kirillov to the “Vchasno” news agency on December 4th, 2016.

This network is ideally shaped for elections, besides this, it was succeeded during the last two years to entice a number of nationalists – well-known in their regions – to the ranks of Civil Corpus and “National Corpus”  — such as the commander of the patrol unit of special function “Eastern Corpus” Oleg Shiryaev in Kharkov, or the commander of a unit of special troops “Transcarpathian Sich” Taras Deyak in Uzhgorod. Unlike the over-exposed politicians, these ones have no anti-rating in society, they score points due to fighting against game halls and the sale of drugs. Forceful actions give them authority among the youth.

The activization of oppositional actions of nationalists and aiming, with their structures, to enter the Verkhovna Rada couldn’t but cause concern for Petro Poroshenko and his environment, due to which since June of this year nationalists in general and “Azov” first of all started to become an object of close attention for both the Ukrainian law enforcement bodies and western journalists. The task of the latter was to prepare the western establishment for the future “cleansing” of right-wing radicals.

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