Far-right politics in Ukraine

During Ukraine's post-Soviet history, the far-right has remained on the political periphery and been largely excluded from national politics since independence in 1991.^[1][2] Unlike most Eastern European countries which saw far-right groups become permanent fixtures in their countries' politics during the decline and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the national electoral support for far-right parties in Ukraine only rarely exceeded 3% of the popular vote.^[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] Only once in the 1994–2014 period was a radical right-wing party elected to the parliament as an independent organization within the proportional part of the voting: Svoboda in 2012.^[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. The importance of the far-right on both sides of the conflict declined over time. 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. As a result, no party was able to win a proportional seat.^[4][5] One party – the Svoboda party – was able to secure a single constituency seat.^[6]

The far-right in Ukraine is not identical with Ukrainian nationalism which resulted in part from Ukraine being historically divided between various imperial powers.^[7] Post-Soviet Ukraine is home to competing nationalisms and cultural orientations.^[8] The nationalist organizations during World War II remain controversial.^[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.^[9]

Hate crimes were relatively uncommon in Ukraine compared to other Eastern European countries, with increase after 2005,^[10] and decrease after 2008 - 2009. The increase was mostly due to informal youth groups, in particular skinheads. 2007 was the most violent year in terms of racially motivated crimes with 88 registered assaults with 6 fatalities.^[11] By comparison, in Russia during the same year there were a reported 625 casualties with 94 deaths attributed to far-right violence. The significant difference results in part the from the different sizes of the racist youth and skinhead scene in Ukraine and Russia.^[11] According to estimates, in 2008 Ukraine had a maximum of 2,000 organized skinheads whereas in Russia the estimates range between 20,000 and 70,000 members of skinhead groups.^[12][13] Since 2008, there has been a more explicit response to such crimes by law enforcement and the justice system, which has led to a decrease of violent right-wing offences.^[10] Ukraine has seen a decrease in both the frequency and the severity of hate crimes since their high in the mid-2000s.^[11] Between 2006 and 2012, there were 295 reported violent hate crimes and 13 hate-crime-related deaths, the last reported death occurred in 2010 before the start of the war with Russia.^[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. The author warned that the spread of extremist ideology was reminiscent of that in Russia 2000-2001.^[14]

In 2018, Human Rights Watch issued a letter stating that, in the months preceding the letter's publication, there have been a series of hate-motivated violent incidents and harassment by radical groups against LGBT people, Roma people, feminists and rights activists. According to the letter, the violent incidents were not prosecuted adequately by the Ukrainian authorities.^[15] According to a 2018 report by Freedom House, in the first three months of 2018, extremist groups tried to disrupt twelve public events and attacked a variety of targets. While direct physical violence was not deployed in all twelve cases, extremist groups sought to restrict the rights and freedoms of Ukraine's citizens. Overall, the report argues that far-right groups have been marginal in Ukrainian society and especially in Ukrainian politics.^[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." The report identified three extremist political parties―Svoboda, National Corps and Right Sector—and argues that their lack of relevance in official politics has resulted in right-wing groups seeking avenues outside of politics to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society. Such attempts have included efforts to disrupt peaceful assemblies and violence against those with opposite political and cultural views including the left, feminists, LGBT groups, and human rights activists. One particular area of concern noted in the report is that Ukrainian law enforcement had failed to properly stop or punish far-right disruption. The report called on Ukrainian authorities to take more effective measures.^[2]

In 2019, a Bellingcat investigation revealed that the Ukrainian government gave over 8 million hryvnias (over US$300,000)) for "national-patriotic education projects" targeting Ukrainian youth. A proportion of this (845,000 hryvnias — over $30,000) went to several far-right nationalist groups, including National Corps and possible fronts for C14.^[17]

Political scientist Tamta Gelashvili noted in 2023, "the Ukrainian far right is louder in words than in action. Empirical studies of the far-right movement in dicate that while active on the streets, the movement mostly engages in peaceful rallies and performances." Their anti-Russian stance took roots from the WWII-times fight for the independence against the Soviet Union. "To this day, opposition to Russian influence on Ukraine and any Ukrainian political actor perceived as pro-Russian is the defining feature of the Ukrainian far right."^[18]

A survey by the Pew Research Center in 2018 found that antisemitic sentiments were less prevalent in Ukraine than other Eastern and Central European countries. While 5% of Ukrainians stated that they would not like to have Jews as their fellow citizens, the figure was 14% in Russia and Hungary, 16% in Greece and 32% in Armenia.^[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.^[20]

Mierzejewski-Voznyak and Bustikov stated that the antisemitic rhetoric used by far-right activists relatively rarely translates into violent actions.^[11][21] Between 2004 and 2014, there were 112 anti-Semitic violent attacks, with a decrease over time, in Ukraine.^[11]

In April 2015, Ukraine passed four decommunization laws regulating official memory of the Soviet period. 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] They laws were criticized by intellectuals in Ukraine and abroad who argued that the laws limited freedom of speech.^[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).^{[22][25][26][27]}

Monuments in honor of members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army such as Stepan Bandera,^[28] Roman Shukhevych and Yaroslav Stetsko have been controversial and, in one case, earned official protest notes by Israel and Poland.^[29][28]

Ukrainian professor Marta Havryshko said that during her history studies at Ivan Franko University in Lviv in the 1990's she was taught that Ukrainian nationalists fought for the country's independence but omitted collaboration with Nazi Germany, she added that the collaboration is also ″kept quiet and swept under the carpet″ in current Ukrainian historical scholarship. According to Havryshko, the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a division of the German Nazi Party military wing Waffen-SS, are heroized by Ukrainian military units, citing an example in the Kyiv Museum of History where parallels are drawn between members of the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Waffen-SS Division.^[30]

Havryshko said that the differentiated view of the 1943 Volhynia massacre of Polish civilians is straining relations with Poland, with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski linking Ukraine's accession to the EU to the resolution of the historic dispute. She added that these Ukrainian narratives favor Russian propaganda by ″pouring oil on its own identity politics fire″, which in turn favors Russian propaganda narratives where the Kremlin exaggerates the influence of the extreme right in Ukraine to justify the invasion of Ukraine.^[30]

Following the February 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied Crimea, and armed detachments of Russians seized towns in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, and, by their claims, "pulled the trigger" of the Donbas War.^[31] In response, several Ukrainian volunteer battalions formed to help the regular Ukrainian military. One of these self-funded volunteer militias was the Azov Battalion.^[32][33] In 2014, some members of the battalion were reported as openly white supremacists.^[34] Its first commander was Andriy Biletsky, the head of the ultra-nationalist and far right political groups Social-National Assembly and Patriots of Ukraine.^[35][34] The battalion was taken under the command of the National Guard of Ukraine in 2015. In June 2015, United States Democratic Representative John Conyers and his Republican colleague Ted Yoho offered bipartisan amendments to prevent U.S. military training of the Azov Battalion—called a "neo-Nazi paramilitary militia" by Conyers and Yoho.^[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.^[39] Alexander Ritzmann, a Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project, wrote of the Azov Battalion: "when your country is under attack by foreign invaders, it is understandable that Ukrainians will not focus on the political views of their co-defenders, but on who can and will fight the invaders".^[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] Cohen cited the Azov Battalion and Right Sector in this regard.^[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'."^[43]

According to a 2016 report by French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), far-right Russian nationalism, neo-imperialism and Orthodox fundamentalism has shaped the official ideology of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics,^[44] the two self-proclaimed states controlled by pro-Russian separatists but internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. During the Russo-Ukrainian War, especially at the beginning, far-right groups played an important role on the pro-Russian side, arguably more so than on the Ukrainian side.^[45][46]

Members and former members of Russian National Unity (RNU), the National Bolshevik Party, the Eurasian Youth Union, and Cossack groups formed branches to recruit volunteers to join the separatists.^{[39][47][48][49]} A former RNU member, Pavel Gubarev, was founder of the Donbas People's Militia and first "governor" of the Donetsk People's Republic.^[39][50] RNU is particularly linked to the Russian Orthodox Army,^[39] one of a number of separatist units described as "pro-Tsarist" and "extremist" Orthodox nationalists.^[51] Neo-Nazi units such as the 'Rusich', 'Svarozhich' and 'Ratibor' battalions, use Slavic swastikas on their badges.^[39] 'Rusich' is part of the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary group in Ukraine which has been linked to far-right extremism.^[52][53]

Some of the most influential far-right nationalists among the Russian separatists are neo-imperialists, who seek to revive the Russian Empire.^[39] These included Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin, first "minister of defence" of the Donetsk People's Republic, who espouses Russian neo-imperialism and ethno-nationalism.^[39] The Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist militant group,^[52] has recruited thousands of volunteers to join the separatists.^[51] Some separatists have flown the black-yellow-white Russian imperial flag,^[39] such as the Sparta Battalion. In 2014, volunteers from the National Liberation Movement joined the DPR People's Militia bearing portraits of Tsar Nicholas II.^[47]

Other Russian volunteers involved in separatist militias included members of the Eurasian Youth Union, and of banned groups such as the Slavic Union and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration.^[48] Another Russian separatist paramilitary unit, the Interbrigades, is made up of activists from the National Bolshevik (Nazbol) group Other Russia.^[39]

Russian far-right groups gradually became less important in Donbas as the need for Russian radical nationalists faded.^[39]

Despite the fact that far-right parties in Ukraine have been unpopular with the electorate and received less support than far-right parties in other European countries, the Russian government and media started to label Ukraine a "fascist state" following the Orange Revolution in 2004.^[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. The impact of these organizations on Ukrainian politics and society has been greatly exaggerated in Russian state media and also in some West European media.^[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.^[54]

Russian president Vladimir Putin used the pretext of "denazification" to launch the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, falsely claiming that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis.^[55] Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an article by Timofey Sergeytsev, "What Russia should do with Ukraine", where he argued that Ukraine and Ukrainian national identity must be wiped out, because he claimed most Ukrainians are at least "passive Nazis".^[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.^[58] Some of the world's leading historians of Nazism and the Holocaust put out a statement rejecting Putin's claims, which was signed by hundreds of other historians and scholars of the subject. It says:

"We strongly reject the Russian government's ... equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression. This rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and those who courageously fought against it".^[59]

The authors say that Ukraine "has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups" like any country, but "none of this justifies the Russian aggression and the gross mischaracterization of Ukraine".^[59] The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum,^[60] the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem condemned Putin's abuse of Holocaust history.^[61][62][63] Ukrainian Jews likewise rejected claims of Ukraine being a neo-Nazi state.^[64]

Kremlin claims of Nazism against Ukraine are partly an attempt to drum-up support for the war among Russians, framing it as a continuation of the Soviet Union's "Great Patriotic War" against Nazi Germany, "even as Russia supports extreme-right groups across Europe".^[65][66] Experts on disinformation say that portraying Ukrainians as Nazis also helps Russians justify war crimes against them, such as the Bucha massacre.^[67] Historian Timothy Snyder said the Russian regime calls Ukrainians "Nazis" to justify genocidal acts against them. He said pro-war Russians use the word "Nazi" to mean "a Ukrainian who refuses to be Russian", and he called Putin's Russia "the world center of fascism" (ruscism).^[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.^{[citation needed]} According to Colborne, Ukraine must understand that any communication failure can undermine Western support and the country's international credibility.^{[citation needed]} Ponomarenko proposed to tighten punitive measures against individual soldiers who display neo-Nazi symbols but also commented how the presence of these symbols is not unprecedented for Western armies, citing similar cases in the Australian Army and a US Marine Corps during the war in Afghanistan.^[73] Russian responses to the Yaroslav Hunka scandal in September 2023 were designed to cause their conduct of war in Ukraine to appear more legitimate,^[74][75] with James L. Turk calling the scandal "a gold mine for Russian propagandists",^[76] who shared on Twitter an image of a fake Ukrainian postage stamp featuring the SS Galician veteran Hunka.^[77]

• Social-National Party of Ukraine (1991–2004)
• Ukrainian National Assembly (1990–present)
• Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (1992–present)
• Svoboda (political party) (2004–present)
• Social-National Assembly (2008–2015)
• Ukrainian National Union (2009–present)
• Right Sector (2013–present)
• National Corps (2016–present)

After Yanokovych's ouster in February 2014, the interim First Yatsenyuk government placed four Svoboda members in leading positions: Oleksandr Sych as Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Ihor Tenyukh as Minister of Defense, lawyer Ihor Shvaika as Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food and Andriy Mokhnyk as Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine; with the fall of the First Yatsenyuk government on 27 November 2014, Svoboda lost representation in the Ukrainian Government.^[78][79] From 14 April 2016 to 29 August 2019, the Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament was Andriy Parubiy,^[80][81] the co-founder of the SNPU; however, Parubiy left such organizations in 2004 and later joined moderate political parties, such as Our Ukraine, Batkivshchyna and the People's Front.^[79][82]

In the 2019 Ukrainian elections, the far-right nationalist electoral alliance, including Svoboda, National Corps, Right Sector, Azov Battalion, OUN, and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, under-performed expectations. In the presidential election, its candidate Ruslan Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the vote, and in the parliamentary election, it was reduced to a single seat and saw its national vote fall to 2.15%, half of its result from 2014 and one-quarter of its result from 2012.^[83][84]

• Patriot of Ukraine (2005–2014)
• S14 (2010–2020)
• Misanthropic Division (2014–present)
• Azov Movement (2014–present)

• Antisemitism in Ukraine
• Far-right politics in Russia
• Radical nationalism in Russia
• Antisemitism in the Soviet Union#Right-wing movements
• Radical right

• Kersten, Joachim; Hankel, Natalia (2013). "A comparative look at right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobic hate crimes in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia". Right-Wing Radicalism Today. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-62723-8.
• Likhachev, Vyacheslav (2018). Far-right Extremism as a Threat to Ukrainian Democracy (PDF). Nations in Transit. Freedom House.
• Mierzejewski-Voznyak, Melanie (2018). "The Radical Right in Post-Soviet Ukraine". The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 860–889. ISBN 978-0-19-027456-6.
• Sakwa, Richard (2015). "Peace and War". Frontline Ukraine. Crisis in Borderlands. London: I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-85773-804-2.