Nazis start another civil war, in western Ukraine on cigarette smuggling profits

This video says about itself:

Ukraine far-right Svoboda party anti-Semitism

31 October 2012

Ukraine’s far right-wing Svoboda party has secured nearly 12% of the vote in the country’s recent parliamentary election, provoking concern among European Jewish groups.

This is the first time in Ukraine’s brief history — the country only became independent in 1991 – that a far-right faction has entered parliament; the party received just 1 percent of votes cast at the previous election in 2007. Svoboda — which translates into English as “Freedom” – performed strongly in western Ukraine, which borders the European Union.

Member of the European Jewish Parliament Rabbi Levi Matusof implored people to “vigorously condemn, unambiguously isolate and unequivocally ostracize those seeking the revival of the darkest ideology of European history“.

The EU has witnessed a general rise in support for far-right parties since the onset of the global economic crisis in 2008, with parties such as Jobbik in Hungary and the Golden Dawn in Greece entering their respective national parliaments despite openly professing anti-Semitic views.

Recently, the Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko gave the fuehrer Yarosh of the neo-nazi movement Right Sector a cushy job as adviser of the minister of war ‘defence’.

Today, however, it looks like there is a conflict between the Kyiv government and the Right Sector.

Is this conflict because of the extreme right’s anti-Semitism? No.

Is this conflict because of the extreme right’s homophobia? No.

Is this conflict because of the extreme right’s misogyny? No.

Is this conflict because of the extreme right’s wearing of swastikas, SS rune signs, wolfsangel signs and other Hitlerite symbols on (para)military uniforms? No.

Is this conflict because of the extreme right’s ISIS style beheadings of prisoners and other crimes in the war in eastern Ukraine? No.

The civil war in eastern Ukraine started because the Kyiv government was unwilling to solve the differences peacefully, labeling eastern Ukrainians and other critics of the government as ‘terrorists’ against whom supposedly even the worst violence was OK and using the violent extreme right to escalate war.

Now, it looks like there is a civil war in western Ukraine as well. Not about the Right Sector’s nazi symbols, racism, etc. etc., but because of a quarrel on cigarette smuggling profits.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Ukraine government in armed standoff with nationalist militia

Government forces barricade bases of Right Sector, which has helped it battle pro-Russian forces, after gunfight reportedly killed two people

Ukrainian servicemen guard entrance to the western city of Mukachevo, after fighting between police and Right Sector fighters took place on Saturday. Photograph: Janos Nemes/EPA

Alec Luhn in Moscow

Sunday 12 July 2015 16.46 BST

Soldiers and police have been locked in a standoff with a nationalist militia in western Ukraine after a gun and grenade battle that left at least two dead.

Tensions have been rising between the government and the Right Sector militia that has helped it fight pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.

A Right Sector spokesman, Taras Kuzyak, told Ukrainian media on Sunday that seven infantry fighting vehicles had blocked the entrance to Right Sector’s base near the town of Skole in Lviv region, adding that law enforcement was similarly cutting off access to other Right Sector bases in western Ukraine.

The move came after a gunfight broke out on Saturday, when about 20 Right Sector gunmen arrived at a sports complex controlled by MP Mikhail Lano. They had been trying to stop the traffic of cigarettes and other contraband, a spokesman for the group said.

Near the city of Mukachevo, the site of a fierce gun battle involving Right Sector fighters, private security guards and police on Saturday, Right Sector members were camped in the forest and did not plan to put down their weapons, spokesman Artem Skoropadsky said. It was previously reported that police had surrounded some gunmen in a wooded area and were attempting to negotiate their surrender.

Lano said a Right Sector commander had met him to ask his help in arranging sanatorium stays for men who had fought in eastern Ukraine, during which time an unknown man was shot outside. According to local medical staff, nine people were wounded, including three passersby, in addition to the fatalities.

A video published by journalist-turned-MP Mustafa Nayyem on Sunday shows Right Sector fighters firing Kalashnikov rifles and a heavy machine gun mounted on a pickup truck, apparently in the direction of police who had arrived on the scene. Another piece of footage shows a police car burning.

About 200 people rallied in support of Right Sector outside the presidential administration in Kiev, many of them in military uniforms.

Kiev has allowed nationalist groups including Right Sector to operate despite allegations by groups such as Amnesty International that Right Sector has tortured civilian prisoners.

From the Daily Telegraph in Britain today:

But Mustafa Nayyem, a Ukrainian MP and investigative journalist who arrived on the scene on Saturday, said the violence was sparked by dispute over control of the contraband cigarette trade.

Citing local residents, Mr Nayyem said “all sides in the conflict” had been involved in a profitable cigarette smuggling business that sees between three and five lorries pass through the region’s border crossings en-route to Germany and Italy each week.

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