[14] Yarosh was born on 30 September 1971 in Dniprodzerzhynsk (now Kamianske), a town in predominantly Russian-speaking Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central-eastern Ukraine.

[19] Since October 1988, Yarosh has been active in Ukrainian politics: in February 1989, he became a member of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, coinciding with his service in the Soviet Army.

In 1994, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yarosh was one of the founders of the Ukrainian nationalist organisation Tryzub.

[16] On 1 April 2013, Yarosh became an assistant-consultant to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) deputy from the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, they are long-time friends.

[20] During the Euromaidan protests in early 2014, Tryzub became the core of the newly-founded Right Sector, a coalition of right-wing nationalists.

[3] During these protests Yarosh advocated for a "national revolution" and dismissed the Viktor Yanukovych administration as an "internal occupational regime".

[6] In the aftermath of the collapse of Yanukovych's regime, Yarosh demanded to be appointed Vice Prime Minister for the law enforcement matters, but his demand was rejected; he was offered a post of the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine instead,[22][23] but Yarosh rejected this position as being beneath him.

[10] A poll conducted by the "Socis" research center (from 25 February – 4 March 2014) predicted that Yarosh's candidacy received the support of 1.6% of the people who were surveyed.

[27] He also stated that he was fully aware it was "virtually impossible" he could win the election and that because he was engaged in military action since the first days of April 2014 he did not campaign.

[27] Yarosh took part in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election as a Right Sector candidate in single-member district number 39 (first-past-the-post wins a parliament seat) located in Vasylkivka Raion.

[30] During the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport, Yarosh was wounded on 21 January 2015 by an exploding Grad rocket in the nearby village of Pisky.

[5] After he was wounded on 21 January 2015 he had delegated tasks to others in the organisation and he stated on 11 November 2015 he "did not want to be a wedding general".

[6] Late December 2015 Yarosh announced he was forming a new political party that would have its founding congress in February 2016.

[39] On November 2, 2021, Yarosh said on social media he had been appointed Adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

[49] On 12 March 2014, an editor of privately owned Lenta.ru website, Galina Timchenko, was fired by the company's owner Alexander Mamut for publishing a link to an interview with Yarosh he gave two days earlier, after Russian media regulatory agency Roskomnadzor formally warned the Lenta.ru website for publishing this link.

[50] On 1 March 2014 Right Sector's page on Russian online social networking service VKontakte showed an entry with Dmytro Yarosh's alleged appeal to Doku Umarov, a Chechen militant guerrilla leader associated with Al-Qaeda, for support of Ukraine.

According to the spokesman, this alleged appeal to Umarov appeared on Right Sector's VKontakte webpage after one of its administrator's accounts was hacked.

[53] On 12 March 2014 an infamous Basmanny court [ru] of Moscow has issued an arrest warrant of Yarosh in absentia alleging public calls for terrorism.

[54] In March 2014 Investigative Committee of Russia has launched a criminal case against Yarosh, and some members (including party leader Oleh Tyahnybok) of Svoboda and UNA-UNSO, for "organising an armed gang" that had allegedly fought against Russian 76th Guards Air Assault Division in the First Chechen War and for "public calls for extremism and public calls for terrorism".