Ukraine Far-Right Group Unveils Presidential Bid

Ukraine's far-right Pravy Sektor movement on Friday announced its leader Dmytro Yarosh would make a presidential bid in elections scheduled for May 25 and said it was ready to go to war with Russia.

The ultra-nationalist group played a crucial role in the frontlines of deadly protests that unseated former President Viktor Yanukovych last month and has been branded a neo-Nazi organization by Russia.

Youthful members of the group profess a patriotic and religious nationalist ideology and some have been spotted brandishing fascist symbols at the main protest camp in central Kiev.

"Dmytro Yarosh will run for president," Andriy Tarasenko, a senior member of the paramilitary group, said at a press conference in Kiev patrolled by young militants in camouflage uniforms.

A poll by the Sotsis Center released this week said Yarosh would win just 1.6 percent of the vote if he ran, putting him in seventh place among other leading figures following Yanukovych's ouster.

But political observers say his popularity could rise as the group has been careful to distance itself from the new pro-EU authorities in Ukraine, which are struggling to avert national bankruptcy.

"There has been no reset of power. Only the names in the government offices have changed," Tarasenko said, adding: "We need a change of the system of power."

But Tarasenko stressed the group would not use "revolutionary methods" against the new pro-EU team and said the struggle had entered "a peaceful phase".

"That is why we are going into politics," he said.

An ex-Soviet soldier with a degree in Ukrainian literature, Yarosh created Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) during the anti-Yanukovych protests as an extension of his existing nationalist group Trizub.

During clashes in February that killed some 100 protesters and police officers, his name was on the lips of the most ardent protesters and his activists still patrol the barricades at the protest camp -- often in pseudo-military uniforms.

They could be seen again on Friday holding the movement's red-and-black flags near piles of flowers where many of the protesters lost their lives, asking for help in their election campaign.

Tarasenko said Pravy Sektor would also take part in mayoral elections in Kiev and local polls across Ukraine due at the same time as the presidential vote in May.

"We remain the leaders of this revolution," said Tarasenko, adding that the movement was ready to fight if a full-scale war with Russia broke out.

"We are mobilizing, we are preparing to react to foreign aggression," he said.

"If the Kremlin goes further, we will fight to defend our native land."

Tarasenko said a Pravy Sektor congress to officially turn the movement into a political party would be held on March 15.

Russia this month opened a criminal investigation against Yarosh for incitement to extremism and terrorism and is seeking the paramilitary's arrest.

In a rare interview with AFP last month, Yarosh denied that he was a fascist and anti-Semite, defining himself as a nationalist who wanted Ukrainians to be "masters of their own land".

Yarosh said Pravy Sektor was a "successor" to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which battled Poles, Soviet and Nazi forces in western Ukraine during and after World War II.

The UPA is hated in Poland for its campaign of slaughter against Polish civilians in the Volhynia region in 1943 and then in Galicia in 1944, now condemned as ethnic cleansing.

The rebels on occasion collaborated with occupying Nazi forces as well as fighting them and -- most controversially -- some of its members served in the Galicia branch of the SS.

Yarosh said he supported Ukraine signing an association agreement with the European Union as the new leadership is planning but drew the line at possible EU membership.

The far-right leader railed against the "Brussels monster" and its "anti-Christian and anti-national rules," saying it was responsible for a "gay dictatorship and liberal totalitarianism".