Deployment of Paramilitary Formations of Ukrainian Extremist Nationalist Organisations and Parties in the Fighting in Eastern Ukraine in 2014
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Copyright (c) 2025 Szabó Lajos

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Extremist Ukrainian nationalist parties entered national politics right away after Ukraine’s independence, but only had significant support in Western Ukraine. These parties never achieved significant political results in the Ukrainian parliamentary or presidential elections. Until the “Revolution of Dignity” of 2013–2014, these parties and organisations, as well as the paramilitary organisations associated with them, were more of an “exotic anachronism” than a real political factor.
The rise of extremist nationalist organisations and paramilitary formations are closely linked to the events following the “Revolution of Dignity”, the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of the armed conflict in Donbas. During the war in Donbas, Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary formations defended Ukraine from the armed uprising of pro-Russian separatist forces as a complement to and occasionally instead of the Ukrainian armed forces, which were incapable of defending the country with arms.
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