THIS week all pretence that the illegal regime, that took power in an imperialist-inspired and financed coup last year, rests on ‘popular democratic’ support, collapsed with the announcement that the neo-Nazi leader and founder of the Right Sector, Dmitro Yarosh, has been appointed as military advisor to the country’s Chief of the General Staff.
In addition to Yarosh being placed amongst the leadership of the army, the fascist gangs of the Right Sector are to be formally ‘integrated’ into the Ukrainian army.
A statement issued by the Ukrainian defence ministry said:
‘Colonel General Viktor Muzhenko, Chief of the General Staff, and Dmytro Yarosh agreed the format of cooperation between “Pravy Sector” (Right Sector) and the Ukrainian Armed Forces.’
The ministry went on to say the Right Sector’s armed gangs had agreed to be ‘subordinated to military leaders’ with both Muzhenko and Yarosh calling for ‘unity’ and pledging that the Right Sector would obey the central commands of Kiev.
Yarosh stated that the Right Sector is ‘ready to perform common tasks with the Army, ready to obey the army leadership in matters relating to national defence against an external enemy, which enables every patriot to protect Ukraine’.
Initially, the Right Sector had refused to obey an ultimatum from the Kiev regime of Petro Poroshenko for the fascist paramilitary groups, that spearheaded the coup in February 2014, to disband or join the Ukrainian army.
This ultimatum was at first contemptuously dismissed by the Right Sector as ‘traitorous’.
This reversal of that position is not hard to understand, given that their leader is now in a top army position – they will be taking their orders directly from him while at the same time using their new ‘legal’ status to access all the advanced weapons being poured into the Ukraine by US imperialism.
The fascist gangs and their leader are now poised to take complete control of the country.
That Poroshenko is forced to accept this risk, is a direct result of the complete collapse of the official Ukrainian army.
According to the German diplomat and head of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, the Ukrainian army is in a ‘terrible condition’ and can no longer fight anymore.
The only forces that continue to fight against the workers’ republics in the east are these fascist and neo-Nazi brigands, who make no secret of the fact that they will not take orders from Poroshenko.
Having to rely on the Right Sector to prop up his faltering regime, Poroshenko faces conflict with one of his fellow oligarchs, Igor Kolomoisky.
This billionaire, who owns a private army of thousands of heavily armed men, was sacked earlier this month as governor of a region in the east of the country in a power struggle between the oligarchs who run the Ukraine.
His sacking followed masked armed men storming the headquarters of the state owned oil company UkrTransNafta in Kiev following the sacking of its director, an ally of Kolomoisky.
This political collapse in the Kiev regime mirrors the economic collapse of the Ukraine which has seen its entire banking system collapse since 2014, with 29 banks going under and a further 14 placed under administration.
In order to secure yet another bail-out from the IMF of $17.5 billion to avert bankruptcy, the Kiev regime has brought in a savage austerity programme involving tax increases and benefit cuts.
With the Ukrainian currency collapsed and inflation running at a staggering 272%, the working class throughout the country are rising up against the Kiev regime and the whole imperialist scheme to smash up the Ukrainian economy, handing its profitable sectors over to western companies while the rest is to be closed down.
To implement this takeover, Poroshenko must go and be replaced with a dictatorship of the Right Sector and their fascist allies. This is what Yarosh is positioning for.
The only way to stop a fascist power grab is through the working class of the east and west uniting and taking immediate action to bring down the Kiev regime and go forward to restore a Soviet Ukraine, as part of the restoration of the USSR.
