**The Right Sector (RS)** is a far-right organization founded at the time of Euromaidan as a coalition of different political groups and activists ready for radical action. It subsequently became a political party represented in many regions of Ukraine. The Right Sector has become a symbol of radical actions on Maidan, and Russian propaganda has largely contributed to such an image. Due to the symbolic status of the organization, even people far from far-right views joined it. **Dmytro Yarosh** became the head of the Right Sector.
The Right Sector was initiated by the nationalist organization **Trident named after Stepan Bandera**. The association also included the **UNA-UNSO, Carpathian Sich, White Hammer, Black Committee, Committee for the Liberation of Political Prisoners, Patriot of Ukraine**, as well as representatives of right-wing football fan movement.
After the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine, the organization formed its own unit, the Right Sector Volunteer Ukrainian Corps (RSV UC), which actively joined the fighting as an autonomous volunteer unit. After most volunteer battalions were disbanded in 2016 or were incorporated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the RSV UC became the only volunteer unit that retained its autonomy. In 2015, leader of the Right Sector Dmytro Yarosh was appointed advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Participation in the war allowed the RS to gain access to weapons and even threaten the authorities, whom members of the Right Sector called “a regime of internal occupation” in their statements in the early years after Maidan. The conflict between the RS and the post-Maidan authorities included several incidents of armed confrontation. For example, law enforcement officers killed an eccentric Right Sector activist, Oleksandr Muzychko (aka Sashko Bilyi) in 2014. In 2015, there was an armed conflict between members of the organization, a local deputy, and the police with the use of heavy weapons in the Transcarpathia region. As a result, two people were killed and several Right Sector members were detained. The Security Service of Ukraine carried out searches of the RS activists and confiscated a large number of arms, ammunition, grenades, cold and traumatic weapons. The Right Sector explained the conflict by a confrontation with local smugglers and law enforcers who were bribed by them.
Like other nationalist parties, the Right Sector failed to convert its symbolic capital gained during Euromaidan into electoral success. During the 2014 parliamentary elections, the party won only 1.8% of the vote, failing to cross the 5% electoral threshold and, therefore, enter the Verkhovna Rada. The only RS member who managed to get into the parliament was the party leader Dmytro Yarosh, who ran in a single-mandate electoral constituency.
After an internal conflict within the party in 2015, Dmytro Yarosh, its leader and the most recognizable public figure, resigned. He established his own organization, the **Yarosh State Initiative** (YSI). The Right Sector quickly lost both its political weight and its popularity among the street right-wingers, giving way to the Azov Movement.
Nevertheless, Right Sector members participate in joint actions of nationalist and far-right organizations, including those involved in far-right violence. They joined one of the most violent attacks on the main LGBT+ event of the year, the Equality March (Kyiv-Pride) in 2015. There were mass beatings of participants, and one law enforcement officer was wounded in the neck by a homemade grenade. The following year, Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadskyi also warned the organizers that if they did not refuse to hold the march, a “bloody mess” would await them. Members of the Right Sector’s youth wing, the **Right Youth** organization, are also actively involved in far-right violence.
