Patriot of Ukraine


The Patriot of Ukraine was an ultranationalist organization in Ukraine founded in 2005 and defunct since December 2014. The group was described as having racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs. The leader of the Patriot of Ukraine and of the Social-National Assembly of Ukraine was Andriy Biletsky.
It constituted a paramilitary wing of the S.N.A., an assemblage of neo-Nazi organizations and groups founded in 2008 that share the social-national ideology and agree upon building a social-national state in Ukraine. Both the Patriot of Ukraine and the S.N.A. engaged in political violence against minorities and their political opponents.
In 2011, three members of Patriot of Ukraine were arrested in Kharkiv Ukraine in an alleged attempt to blow up a statue of Vladimir Lenin. In Kharkiv, Patriot of Ukraine members were arrested and charged with attempted murder, after an attempt to murder Biletsky. In an interview to the Left Bank on 10 December 2014, Biletsky announced that the Patriot of Ukraine as political organization suspended its activities due to the war situation in the country and dissolved primarily within the Azov Battalion.

History

The origin of the Patriot of Ukraine can be traced to Lviv where the Association of Support for the Armed Forces and Navy of Ukraine Patriot Ukrayiny was registered on 10 June 1996 as a civic association, registration number 375.
display a flag bearing the emblem of Patriot of Ukraine
The First Congress of the Patriot of Ukraine was held in Lviv on 12 December 1999 where it was officially adopted by the Social-National Party of Ukraine as its paramilitary youth wing. In the evening, around 1500 members of the SNPU and the Patriot of Ukraine staged a torchlight demonstration in the city. The first leader of the organization became Andriy Parubiy, who established a long-lasting tradition of torchlight parades, which became an organizational trademark. At that time Parubiy gained national notoriety in Ukraine after he was put on trial for alleged assault on communist demonstrators in Lviv on 7 November 1997. The main TV channels in Ukraine broadcast footage of Parubiy clashing with the demonstrators. The trial was dragged, moved around, and finally the case was dismissed due to the statute of limitations. A photo of Parubiy leading the Patriot of Ukraine march was placed on the cover of his book published in Lviv in 1999.
The Patriot of Ukraine was dissolved by the Social-National Party of Ukraine on 14 February 2004, when the Ninth Congress of the SNPU adopted the new name of VO Svoboda and elected Oleh Tyahnybok as its leader. Aiming at building a parliamentary type of political organization with an image of the "party of order", Svoboda had shaken off some old baggage, including Wolfsangel-type logo, which was replaced with the national colors and a trident hand gesture, the so-called "Trident of Liberty".
The original Patriot of Ukraine organization was also discarded since Svoboda wanted to appeal to a broader base of the Ukrainian electorate. Eventually, while still remaining a radical nationalist party, Svoboda was able to benefit from its new strategy. First, it scored wins at the 2010 Ukrainian local elections in three regions of western Ukraine, then it won 10.5% of the national vote during the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election and created its own parliamentary faction in the Verkhovna Rada. However, some regional branches of the Patriot of Ukraine in Zhytomyr and in Kharkiv refused to disband.

Re-establishment

In 2005, the process of the re-establishment was started in Kharkiv where the Patriot of Ukraine was re-constituted as an independent political organization and subsequently registered by local authorities as a civic association on 17 January 2006, registration number 1057.
The Patriot of Ukraine defined itself as a "revolutionary vanguard of the Ukrainian social-nationalistic movement". The organization continued to use the "Idea of the Nation" symbol which was initially used by the Social-National Party of Ukraine, the only difference is the color of the monogram as the SNPU used azure monogram on gold and the Patriot of Ukraine utilizes sable on gold and gold on sable. The monogram consists of a combination of the Latin letters I and N. The letter N symbolizes the central place of the national idea in organizational ideology; while the letter I with both ends sharpened emphasizes the unstoppable movement of ideas and triumph of the ideal over materialistic.
In 2007, the organization officially ended its relationship with Svoboda, a direct descendant to the Social-National Party of Ukraine.
In the party statement, it was announced as follows:
Despite the split some prominent Svoboda's members such as Andriy Illienko, Chairman of the Kiev City Branch of the Vo Svoboda All-Ukrainian Union and a member of the Verhovna Rada, continued to advocate social-nationalism and idea of the two revolutions which created a common ground with the Patriot of Ukraine.
Some researchers pointed to the fact that even after the declarative break-up, VO Svoboda continued to benefit:

Ideology and program

The Patriot of Ukraine promoted an extreme nationalist, racist, islamophobic and neo-Nazi platform, including:
In August 2011, three Patriot of Ukraine supporters were arrested and convicted in the so-called Vasylkiv terrorists case.
At the end of 2013, at the beginning of the Euromaidan protest movement, the Patriot of Ukraine created the Right Sector along with other far-right and nationalist parties and groups, including the Trident of Stepan Bandera, UNA-UNSO and the White Hammer, although they would later be dissociated.
During the Euromaidan, militants from the Patriot of Ukraine were active participants of major clashes with the riot police. According to Igor Krivoruchko, a leader of the Kiev's S.N.A. branch, they seized and burned the headquarters in Kiev of the Party of Regions on 18 February 2014.
On 29 April 2014, the Patriot of Ukraine together with the Spilna Sprava staged a torch rally procession in Kiev to commemorate the Euromaidan fallen heroes. The self-defense of Euromaidan attempted to disperse the rally and as a result a massive fist fight near Maidan Nezalezhnosti flared up.