Ukraine: Neo-Nazi Right Sector fighters attack pro-Russian MP

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov addressed an emphatic warning to neo-Nazis from the Right Sector organization on 1 October. In response to an attack committed Tuesday by right-wing radicals against a pro-Russian MP, Avakov declared that America and Europe could turn away from supporting Ukraine if similar incidents persist.  

The victim was Ukrainian MP Nestor Shufrych (Party of the Regions), a famous critic of the current regime’s military campaign against pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country. On Tuesday he was beaten up in the Black Sea port city of Odessa by a Right Sector commando unit who broke his nose, bruised his eye and bloodied his face.    

Ukrainian media report that the MP is hospitalized in Odessa with a concussion. "A few more beat-up Shufryches and Europe will turn away from our victorious revolution. I am afraid America will as well," Interior Minister Avakov posted to Facebook on 1 October.

"Mister Radicals, unless you want to be taken for insignificant morons, stop lynching people," Avakov wrote. The Unian press agency reported that the reason for Tuesday’s incident was a lustration law now being intensively discussed in Ukraine.  

Shufrych is an opponent of lustration, and the Right Sector activists wanted to throw him into a garbage bin, which has become a widespread form of protest recently in Ukraine. The MP, however, is said to have defended himself proficiently and to have not succumbed until he was soundly punched.