Dmytro Ivanovych "Da Vinci" Kotsiubailo was a Ukrainian volunteer, soldier, lieutenant, a commander of the 1st Mechanized Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He was a participant in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Kotsiubailo was the youngest battalion commander in the history of the Ukrainian Army. He served as a leader of the right-wing Right Sector movement.

Right Sector is a loosely defined coalition of right-wing to far-right Ukrainian nationalist organizations. It originated in November 2013 as a right-wing, paramilitary confederation of several ultranationalist organizations at the Euromaidan revolt in Kyiv, where its street fighters participated in clashes with riot police. The coalition became a political party on 22 March 2014, at which time it claimed to have roughly 10,000 members. Founding groups included the Trident (Tryzub), led by Dmytro Yarosh and Andriy Tarasenko, and the Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA–UNSO), a political and paramilitary organization. Other founding groups included the Social-National Assembly, and its Patriot of Ukraine paramilitary wing, White Hammer, and the Sich Battalion. White Hammer was expelled in March 2014, and Patriot of Ukraine left the organization, along with many UNA–UNSO members, in the following months.