Far Right Expert Anton Shekhovtsov Discusses Recent March In Ukraine

What You Need To Know:

✔ The march on October 14th is a tradition of Ukrainian right-activists known as a Defender's Day
✔ The march was full of anti-government mottos
✔ The violence which ensued near the Parliament was a failure of Ukrainian police forces
✔ Russian and Ukrainian far-rights movements are not homogeneous

Anton Shekhovtsov, Visiting Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute (UK), Research Associate at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation (Ukraine) and Editor of the "Explorations of the Far Right" book series at Ibidem-Verlag believes that the far-right movement in Ukraine is losing popularity.

Mr Shekhovtsov says that the amount of people who came to the march was quite impressive. The Ukrainian far-right party “Svoboda” is trying to recover its’ image after the attacks near the Ukrainian Parliament that occurred in August of 2015. They are trying to define themselves as the most radical opposition to the current government. Shekhovtsov believes that war is something natural for far-rights and they are trying to recruit former warriors. His point of view is that the Ukrainian State does not have a strategy on how to deal with the far-right, however the police and military forces try to monitor the situation.

Hromadske International's Alexandra Azarkhina interviewed Anton Shekhovtsov in Kyiv on October 15th 2015.