Dmytro Yarosh

Yarosh was born on 30 September 1971 in Dniprodzerzhynsk, a town in predominantly Russian-speaking Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central-eastern Ukraine.[14][15] Yarosh grew up in a Russian-speaking family.[16] His mother worked in a car factory and his father an engineer at a machine plant.[16] Yarosh has described his early ears as "a happy Soviet childhood."[16] His father refused to join the Communist Party, although Yarosh claims he was asked to join many times.[16]

In 1988 Yarosh graduated from High School #24 of Dniprodzerzhynsk.[17] As almost all pre-teens and young teenagers in the Soviet Union, he was a member of Young Pioneers and later the Countrywide Leninist Communist Youth League organizations, youth-based sub-organizations of the Communist Party.[16]

In the mid-1980s Yarosh became interested in politics and according to him the Soviet Union "It became clear that the system was false.[16]

In 1989 Yarosh who was 18 at the time and a group of friends (who were all about twelve years old)[16] were, allegedly, the first person who first raised the yellow-blue flag of Ukraine in East Ukraine, more precisely in Dneprodzerzhinsk.[16][17] The flag was sewed by his grandmother and her sister with cloth bought by Yarosh.[16]

Starting in February 1989, Yarosh was a member of People's Movement of Ukraine organisation. From October 1989 to November 1991 he was drafted and served two years in the Soviet army as a private.[17]

During the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yarosh joined Ukrainian nationalist groups. In 1994, he joined the Tryzub organization which he has led since 2005.[18]

Since October 1988 Yarosh takes an active part in political activities.[19]

In February 1989 he became a member of the People’s Movement of Ukraine.[19]

In 1989-1991 Yarosh served in the ranks of the Soviet army.[19]

In 1994 Yarosh was one of the founders of the nationalist organization Tryzub.[19] An organization he became head of in 2005.[19] In October 2010 he tried to create a unified Nationalist movement.[19]

In 2001 Yarosh graduated from the State University of Education in Drohobych, Ukraine (Дрогобицький державний педагогічний університет імені Івана Франка).[15]

On 1 April 2013, Yarosh became an assistant-consultant to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) deputy from the UDAR party Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, they are long-time friends.[19]

Percentage of votes won by Yarosh during the 2014 presidential election

During the Euromaidan protests in early 2014, Tryzub became the core of the newly founded Right Sector, a coalition of right-wing nationalists.[4] During these protests Yarosh advocated for a "national revolution" and dismissed the Viktor Yanukovych administration as an "internal occupational regime".[5] In early February, weeks before the ousting of President Yanukovych, Yarosh stated in an interview that there would be no civil war in Ukraine because 80% of the population did not support Yanukovych.[20]

Right before the 21 February ouster of Yanukovych, in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Yarosh claims he and the Right Sector leadership was consulted by Yanukovych on the deal Yanukovych had signed with the opposition to end Euromaidan.[7] Yarosh refused to endorse this agreement and refused to disarm Right Sector.[7]

Following a 10 March 2014, Lenta.ru interview by Ilya Azar[lower-alpha 1] of Andriy Tarasenko[lower-alpha 2] from the Right Sector's Kyiv branch,[21] Roskomnadzor immediately issued a press release on 12 March 2014,[22] in which Lenta.ru was implicated in violating numerous Russian media laws, information laws, and laws to counter extremism because the interview allowed a leader from the informal group to appeal to persons in the nation of Ukraine (Ukrainians, Crimean Tartars, and others) to support causes for the inviolable territory of Ukraine which has always included Crimea and that the article contained a link to Dmytro Yarosh's 1 March 2014, appeal to fight Moscow's imperialism.[21][23][24][25][26][lower-alpha 3] Since the warning by Roskomnadzor was the second issued in a 12 month period, Roskomnadzor would ask the courts to terminate Lenta.ru's mass media license.[22][25] However, Lenta.ru's owner Alexander Mamut fired nearly half its staff and established a very pro Kremlin media source. The fired personnel stated that the new Editor-in-Chief Alexey Goreslavsky is Kremlin controlled for the Kremlin's propaganda purposes.

In the aftermath of the collapse of Yanukovych's regime, Yarosh demanded to be appointed Vice Prime Minister for the law enforcement matters, but his demand was rejected; he was offered a post of the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine instead,[27][28] but Yarosh rejected this position as being beneath him.[29] There were discussions of appointing Yarosh deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, but these discussions quickly petered out for unknown reasons.[27]

On 20 April 2014, Dmytro Yarosh claims he was ordered by acting President Oleksandr Turchinov to lead 20 Right Sector members to sabotage an insurgent-controlled television tower in Sloviansk, leading to the first combat fatalities in the Siege of Sloviansk. Yarosh denied his role in these events until two years later.[30]

Yarosh was a candidate in the 25 May 2014 Ukrainian presidential election.[10] A poll conducted by the "Socis" research center (from 25 February – 4 March 2014) predicted that Yarosh's candidacy received the support of 1.6% of the people who were surveyed.[31] On election day he actually received 0.7% of the votes.[10] In January 2019 Yarosh stated he only took part in the election "not to destroy the revolutionary structures after the revolution".[32] He also stated that he was fully aware it was "virtually impossible" he could win the election and that because he was engaged in military action since the first days of April 2014 he did not campaign.[32]

Yarosh took part in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election as a Right Sector candidate in single-member district number 39 (first-past-the-post wins a parliament seat) located in Vasylkivka Raion.[11] He won a parliamentary seat by winning this constituency with 29.76% of the votes.[11] Yarosh did not join a faction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament).[33] He did join the inter-factional group Ukrop.[34]

During the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport, Yarosh was wounded on 21 January 2015 by an exploding Grad rocket in the nearby village of Pisky.[35] He was evacuated out of the conflict zone.

In early April 2015, Ukraine's defence ministry announced that MP Dmytro Yarosh was to become an aide to military chief Viktor Muzhenko and that his Right Sector fighting group would be integrated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine.[36]

Yarosh resigned as Right Sector leader on 11 November 2015.[6] After he was wounded on 21 January 2015 he had delegated tasks to others in the organisation and he stated on 11 November 2015 he "did not want to be a wedding general".[6] Especially since he claimed "my positions were not always the same as the aspirations of some of the leadership".[7] Late December 2015 Yarosh announced he was forming a new political party that would have its founding congress in February 2016.[8]

In February 2016 Yarosh started a new organisation called Governmental Initiative of Yarosh (DIYA).[9] The departure of Yarosh resulted in at least 20% of Right Sector members leaving with him.[37] According to Yarosh DIYA will be a public movement like People's Movement of Ukraine was in its early days.[38][39]

Yarosh did not participate in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election.[32] In the election he endorsed the candidacy of Ruslan Koshulynskyi.[32]

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election DIYA joined a united party list with the political parties of Svoboda, Right Sector and National Corps.[40] Yarosh himself was placed 3rd on the party list.[40] But in the election they won not enough votes to clear the 5% election threshold and thus no parliamentary seats.[41] The party did also not win a single-mandate constituency parliamentary seat.[42]

On 1 March 2014 Right Sector's page on Russian online social networking service VKontakte showed an entry with Dmytro Yarosh's alleged appeal to Dokka Umarov, a Chechen militant guerrilla leader associated with Al-Qaeda, for support of Ukraine.[52] On 2 March 2014, Right Sector's spokesman Art Skoropadskyi denied the message was posted and approved by Yarosh. According to the spokesman, this alleged appeal to Umarov appeared on Right Sector's VKontakte webpage after one of its administrator's accounts was hacked.[53] VKontakte blocks the page at a request of an Attorney General of Russia. On 11 March 2014 Russian State Duma deputy Valery Rashkin urged Russian special services to "follow Mossad examples" and assassinate leaders of Right sector Dmytro Yarosh and Oleksandr Muzychko.[54]

On 12 March 2014 Basmanny court of Moscow ordered Yarosh's arrest on the charge of public inciting of terrorism.[55]

In March 2014 Russia launched a criminal case against Yarosh, and some members (including party leader Oleh Tyahnybok) of Svoboda and UNA-UNSO, for "organizing an armed gang" that had allegedly fought against Russian 76th Guards Air Assault Division in a First Chechen War and for "public calls for extremism and public calls for terrorism".[56][57] Yarosh has been placed on an international wanted list by Interpol at the request of the Russian Federation on 25 July 2015.[12][58] The charge last alleges he "incriminated [himself by making] public appeals to terrorism and extremism." These two actions are a crime according to Russian criminal code (205th and 280th articles, respectively).[59] Yarosh has been placed on an international wanted list by the Russian Federation.[58] This made him the only person wanted internationally after the beginning of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in 2014.[60] Since 2 Januari 2016 Yarosh name can not be found on the international wanted list that is visible on Interpol's website.[13]

According to an article on Russian-government funded news site RT, on 16 March, Yarosh threatened to demolish the entire Russian gas pipeline to Europe if a diplomatic solution was not found for the Ukraine/Russia standoff. According to the RT article, Yarosh warned "Crimea was too small to satisfy the appetite of the 'Russian Empire...'"[61]