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.
Dmytro Yarosh, Tryzub's leader and the former leader of Right Sector.
Protesters throwing bricks at riot police, using tire smoke for cover from sniper fire, Kyiv, 18 February 2014
Activists in Odesa holding Right Sector banner with ship-anchor design, 9 February 2014
Patriot of Ukraine members standing guard at a Right Sector event, Euromaidan, Kyiv, 13 April 2014
Ukrainian nationalism is the promotion of the unity of Ukrainians as a people and the promotion of the identity of Ukraine as a nation state. The origins of modern Ukrainian nationalism emerge during the 17th-century Cossack uprising against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Ukrainian nationalism draws upon a single national identity of culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics, religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history that dates back to the 9th century.
St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv, reconstructed after Ukrainian independence
Postcard published by the Ukrainian Brigade, "United Ukrainians defend against both Polish and Russian forces", 1920
Ukrainian nationalists demonstrate against the Soviet Union and for an independent Ukraine in 1941
Lviv football fans at a 2010 game against Donetsk. The banner reads "Bandera – our hero."