Right Sector takes control of Lviv

Ukraine’s nationalist-radical organization Right Sector has announced it has taken control of Lviv. Members of the Right Sector say security road blocks have been opened around the city to avoid sabotages.

After a series of explosions near police offices in Lviv that injured several people, the local office of the Right Sector was quick to say they bear no relation to what the attorney’s office classified as terror attacks. Radicals say they have developed methods to fight the street crime.

“Our organization responds to such kind of incidents and actually controls the situation in the city to prevent provocations. To that end, we have opened security road blocks around Lviv so that thugs for hire could not enter the city and make subversive actions here,” said a Right Sector spokesman Taras Kuzyak.

He complained about the recent efforts to defame his organization. Kuzyak said that after the incidents in Mukachevo, the Right Sector is blamed for any lawlessness, while the activists in Lviv, as he thinks, help the police to maintain stability in the region. “After the expositions, we arrived on the scene, as it was widely rumored that they want to hang those crimes on the Right Sector. We assure you that our organization has no relation to it,” he said.

It was reported earlier, that the Right Sector activists have replaced the EU flags in front of the regional administration building in Lviv with their black-and-red flags. The radicals blocked the international highway Kiev-Chop, 20km from Lviv, not to let Kiev’s security forces to Mukacheve. In addition, the Ukrainian nationalists have been rallying outside the President’s Administration in Kiev and in other towns in the West of Ukraine for the third day already.  They say the rally will continue as long as necessary and demand resignation of Arsen Avakov, the interior minister, and punishment of the security officers that used force against the right-wing radical group in Zakarpattia.

Today, the Right Sector militants announced a “veche” (popular assembly) in the Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kiev for Sunday, July 19.

The latest armed conflict in Mukacheve, Zakarpattia region, between the activists of the Right Sector and the men of the local parliamentarian Michael Lan has triggered the popular assembly. EADaily reported earlier that the police were involved into the skirmishes too. The sides used grenades, “Utes” 12.7 mm caliber heavy machine gun of Soviet origin and grenade launchers. A local filling station and several cars caught fire killing three people.