Ukraine nationalist Right Sector party rejects Minsk truce

Ukraine’s Right Sector political party has reiterated calls to disregard the Minsk ceasefire agreements between Kiev and pro-Russia forces.

In a statement released on Sunday, the ultra-nationalist party urged Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to target the pro-Russians’ positions in eastern Ukraine irrespective of a fragile truce between the two sides.

“We demand that the Poroshenko regime reject the Minsk agreements, and renew the offensive military operations aimed at liberating occupied territories [in eastern Ukraine],” read the statement, published on the party’s website.

The party also rehashed its jingoistic rhetoric, calling on Poroshenko to eliminate all elements affiliated with the country’s ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Poroshenko should do his utmost “to reshuffle personnel in the Defense Ministry and the Army, to fairly punish state criminals of the Yanukovich regime, to make real steps in the fight with corruption and to change the oligarchical orientation of the government to a national [one],” the statement added.

Right Sector has repeatedly denounced the Minsk ceasefire deals, saying they run counter to Ukraine’s constitution and thus have “no legal force.”

The ultranationalists “reserve the right” to continue attacks on pro-Russians even if Kiev decides to terminate all military activity in the violence-wracked region, said the party’s leader Dmitry Yarosh.

The radical party, which includes a number of nationalist and neo-Nazi paramilitary organizations, played a major role in toppling Yanokovich during western-backed protests in February 2014.

Earlier in the day, the officials in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) claimed that the Ukrainian military violated the ceasefire agreement 31 times over the past 24 fours, leaving a man dead and a woman wounded.

"It is another appalling breach of the Minsk process … Those are things to be unacceptable in intensifying negotiations process,” said Denis Pushilin, who represented the region at Minsk peace talks last year.

During negotiations in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk on February 11-12, the leaders of Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine reached a deal, dubbed Minsk II, on the withdrawal of heavy weapons from Ukraine’s front lines and a ceasefire, which officially went into effect on February 14. The two sides, however, have continued to engage in sporadic clashes.

Back in September 2014, the representatives of Ukraine, Russia, and the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had signed another ceasefire deal in Minsk. However, the truce was violated on an almost daily basis by both the Ukrainian military and the pro-Russia forces.

Donetsk and Lugansk are two mainly Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine, which have been hit by deadly clashes since Kiev launched military operations in April last year to crush pro-Russia protests there.

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