Far-right politics in Ukraine
[3] Far-right parties usually enjoyed just a few wins in single-mandate districts, and no far right candidate for president has ever secured more than 5 percent of the popular vote in an election.
[3] Since then far-right parties have failed to gain enough votes to attain political representation, even at the height of nationalist sentiment during and after Russia's annexation of Crimea and the Russo-Ukrainian War.
[3] The far-right was heavily represented among the pro-Russian separatists with several past or current leaders of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk linked to various neo-Nazi, white supremacist and ultra-nationalist groups.
In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, the coalition of Svoboda and the other extreme-right political parties in Ukraine―National Corps, the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh, and the Right Sector―won only 2.15% of the vote combined and failed to pass the 5% threshold.
[8] National attitudes about the far-right are impacted by the ambivalent role Ukraine played during Nazi occupation, with Ukrainians volunteering in SS troops and as concentration camp guards.
[11] In 2008, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, issued an open letter complaining about the radical right-wing organization Patriot of Ukraine which according to the author had close ties to Russian and Ukrainian extremists.
While direct physical violence was not deployed in all twelve cases, extremist groups sought to restrict the rights and freedoms of Ukraine's citizens.
[16] The 2018 report by Freedom House concluded that far-right groups in Ukraine had no significant representation in parliament nor any plausible path to power, but had "a serious impact on everyday life and societal development in the country."
[19] According to a 2023 survey by the Anti-Defamation League Ukraine has a 29% index score (answering 'probably true' to a majority of the antisemitic stereotypes tested), compared to 37% for Hungary, 35% for Poland and 26% for Russia.
The laws ban Nazi and Communist ideology and symbols and the "public denial of the criminal nature of the Communist totalitarian regime 1917–1991"; they open former KGB archives; replace the Soviet term "great patriotic war" with the European second world war, and provide public recognition to anyone who fought for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century.
[22] The laws represent attempts to reorient historical memory and pivot more decisively away from the Russian-Soviet narrative of the Soviet period, and in particular the World War II era.
[23][24] The fourth bill in the package, "On the Legal Status and Honouring of Fighters for Ukraine's Independence in the Twentieth Century", has been particularly controversial because it covers a long list of individuals and organisations from human rights activists to fighters accused of committing crimes during World War II, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
[36][37][38] While far-right volunteers played a role in the early stages of the Donbas War, their importance was often exaggerated, and both sides had less need to rely on them as the conflict progressed.
[40] American scholar and journalist Stephen F. Cohen wrote in The Nation in 2018 that the resurrection of Nazi ideology could be observed all around the globe, including Europe and the United States, but that the growing Ukrainian Neo-Nazi movement posed a special danger due to its well-armed and well-organized nature.
[41] In 2020, Taras Kuzio criticized Cohen, noting research finding that these groups were largely made up of Russian speakers and national minorities.
Kuzio says despite Cohen's claims, even Right Sector and the Azov Regiment that are often described as 'Ukrainian nationalist', included minorities such as Georgians, Jews, Russians, Tatars, and Armenians.
[42] British scholar Richard Sakwa wrote in 2015 that "The creation of the National Guard, consisting largely of far-right militants and others from the Maidan self-defence forces, had the advantage of removing these militants from the centre of Kyiv and other western Ukrainian towns, but they often lacked discipline and treated south-east Ukraine as occupied territory, regularly committing atrocities against civilians and captured 'terrorists'.
[1] The subject of the far right's alleged influence in Ukraine became especially politicized during the 2014 Revolution of Dignity when small radical groups received disproportionate media attention not only in Russia but also in the West.
[3] Media coverage has been focused largely on Right Sector and on Svoboda,[1] whose members stand accused of killing four national guardsmen using hand grenades during a rally outside Ukrainian parliament in August 2015.
[56][57] These allegations of Nazism are widely rejected as untrue and part of a Russian disinformation campaign to justify the invasion, with many pointing out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and had relatives who were victims of the Holocaust.
[56] Observers commented how Russia has used real issues, such antisemitism in Ukraine and Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany, for its own propaganda in support of Putin's debunked de-Nazification claim,[68] as Ukraine is not a Nazi state, Russia has been supported by the European far-right, and Russian fighters in the war include neo-Nazis,[69] and its de-Nazifications claims and invasion are not true or justified.
[68][70] By June 2023, some observers, such as Bellingcat analyst Michael Colborne in a New York Times article and war reporter since 2014 and Kyiv Independent journalist Illya Ponomarenko,[71][72] argued that Ukraine should consider more seriously the media damage produced by the partial negligence in the condemnation of some symbols, which are present in the most radical military communities of both sides in the conflict, including Azov, the Russian Volunteer Corps, Wagner, and the numerous neo-Nazis within the Russian Imperial Movement.
