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Russia has labelled as fascists the new leaders in Ukraine and the protesters and opposition
who toppled Viktor Yanukovych from power. BBC Kiev correspondent David Stern considers
the importance of Ukraine's far right. Amid the ocean of candles and flowers, at
one of the dozens of shrines to dead anti-government protesters, shot during Kiev's horrific violence,
there was a small plastic Israeli flag. It was for Alexander Scherbatyuk, a Jewish-Ukrainian
Afghan war veteran. Inside the columned central hall of Kiev's
city council, an activist base of operations, hung a giant banner with a Celtic cross, a
symbol of "white power," and an American confederate flag.
Over the doorway was an immense portrait of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist
partisan leader during World War Two, who at one point was allied with the Nazis.
These two images illustrate how complex and contradictory is the subject of the far right
in Ukraine's mass protest movement, the Euromaidan. Their role in ousting the president and establishing
a new Euromaidan-led government should not be exaggerated.
But, as the second image shows, nor should their involvement be played down, especially
now they have assumed key ministerial posts. Euromaidan officials are not fascists, nor
do fascists dominate the movement. Contrary to some claims, ethnic Russians and
Russian-speakers are not being attacked or under threat of violence. And anti-Semitism
has played absolutely no role in the demonstrations and government.
Euromaidan has been a movement supported by just under half of Ukrainians according to
a recent poll - representing a broad swathe of Ukrainian society: Russian and Ukrainian
speakers; east and west; gay and straight; Christians, Muslims and Jews.
They united to remove Viktor Yanukovych and seem to be coming together again in the belief
they need to defend Ukraine against Russia. The ultra-nationalists, and their extreme
right fringe, are a small part of the overall campaign - a subgroup of a minority. They
are concentrated primarily amid the tents, barricades and self-defence units of the Maidan,
the shorthand term for the movement's core. However, even though the far right are a minority,
for their numbers they have played an outsized, though not decisive, role. What is more, at
key points they have influenced the course of the demonstrations.
And, at times, they have appeared to be the driving force behind the Maidan - which has
become an actor in the protests in its own right, alongside the political parties, the
government and the Ukrainian population as a whole.