The Russian law enforcers opened criminal cases against five Russian citizens who joined the Right Sector, the famous far-right Ukrainian organization.
‘The Committee ruled that actions by Igor Chudinov, Gennadiy Khamrayev, Georgiy Stotsky, Roman Strigunkov and Alexandr Valov bear signs of crimes as stated in Article 282 of Russia’s Criminal Code (involvement and managing the extremist organization),’ the authority’s press service said.
The Committee says that Chudinov chaired one of the units of Ukraine’s Volunteer Corps of the ‘Right Sector’, upon his moving to Ukraine; Khamrayev fought in this unit, while the rest of the accused men joined the peaceful actions held by the Right Sector.
In September 2016, a similar case was opened against key figures of the Right Sector, including the-then leader of the organization, Dmytro Yarosh, and the current leader, Andriy Tarasenko.
The Right Sector is a far-right Ukrainian nationalist political party that originated in November 2013 as a paramilitary confederation at the Euromaidan revolution in Kyiv, where its street fighters stood up against the riot police. The coalition became a political party on 22 March 2014. When the Donbas conflict began in April 2014, many of the organization’s members joined the Ukrainian troops to oppose the Russian aggression in the country’s easternmost regions; this is how the Ukraine’s Volunteer Corps of the ‘Right Sector’ emerged.
The Right Sector was officially banned in Russia in January 2015.
