Dmytro Yarosh

Dmytro Anatoliiovych Yarosh (Дмитро Анатолійович Ярош; born 30 September 1971) is a Ukrainian activist, politician, nationalist and military commander who is the main commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army.

Yarosh was born on 30 September 1971 in Dniprodzerzhynsk (now Kamianske), a town in predominantly Russian-speaking Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central-eastern Ukraine.

Yarosh grew up in a Russian-speaking family.

His mother worked in a car factory and his father an engineer at a machine plant.

Yarosh has described his early years as "a happy Soviet childhood."

His father refused to join the Communist Party, although Yarosh claims he was asked to join many times.

In the mid-1980s, Yarosh became interested in politics and according to him the Soviet Union "It became clear that the system was false".

In 1988 Yarosh graduated from High School #24 of Dniprodzerzhynsk.

As almost all pre-teens and young teenagers in the Soviet Union, he was a member of Young Pioneers and later the Countrywide Leninist Communist Youth League organisations, youth-based sub-organisations of the Communist Party.

Since October 1988, Yarosh has been active in Ukrainian politics: in February 1989, he became a member of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, coinciding with his service in the Soviet Army.

In 1989, Yarosh, who was 18 at the time, and a group of friends (who were all about twelve years old) were, allegedly, the first people to raise the yellow-blue flag of Ukraine in eastern Ukraine, more precisely in Dneprodzerzhinsk.

The flag was sewed by his grandmother and her sister with cloth bought by Yarosh.

Starting in February 1989, Yarosh was a member of People's Movement of Ukraine organisation.

From October 1989 to November 1991 he was drafted and served two years in the Soviet army as a private.

During the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yarosh joined Ukrainian nationalist groups.

In 1994, he joined the Tryzub organisation, which he has led since 2005.

In 1994, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yarosh was one of the founders of the Ukrainian nationalist organisation Tryzub.

In 2001, Yarosh graduated from the State University of Education in Drohobych, Ukraine (today the Дрогобицький державний педагогічний університет імені Івана Франка).

He later became head of Tryzub in 2005.

In October 2010, he tried to create a unified Ukrainian nationalist movement.

From 2013 to 2015, he led the Right Sector nationalist organisation, and formerly the Right Sector's Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.

On 1 April 2013, Yarosh became an assistant-consultant to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) deputy from the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, they are long-time friends.

From 2014 until 2019, Yarosh served as a People's Deputy of Ukraine.

In the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election, Yarosh received 127,772 votes (0.7% of the total).

He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election from a single-seat constituency in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast by winning 29.76% of the votes.

During the Euromaidan protests in early 2014, Tryzub became the core of the newly-founded Right Sector, a coalition of right-wing nationalists.

During these protests Yarosh advocated for a "national revolution" and dismissed the Viktor Yanukovych administration as an "internal occupational regime".

In early February, weeks before the ousting of President Yanukovych, Yarosh stated in an interview that there would be no civil war in Ukraine because 80% of the population did not support Yanukovych.

Right before the 21 February ouster of Yanukovych, in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Yarosh claims he and the Right Sector leadership was consulted by Yanukovych on the deal Yanukovych had signed with the opposition to end Euromaidan.

Yarosh refused to endorse this agreement and refused to disarm Right Sector.

In the aftermath of the collapse of Yanukovych's regime, Yarosh demanded to be appointed Vice Prime Minister for the law enforcement matters, but his demand was rejected; he was offered a post of the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine instead, but Yarosh rejected this position as being beneath him.

There were discussions of appointing Yarosh deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, but these discussions quickly petered out for unknown reasons.

On 20 April 2014, Dmytro Yarosh claims he was ordered by acting President Oleksandr Turchinov to lead 20 Right Sector members to sabotage an insurgent-controlled television tower in Sloviansk, leading to the first combat fatalities in the Siege of Sloviansk.

Yarosh denied his role in these events until two years later.

Yarosh was a candidate in the 25 May 2014 Ukrainian presidential election.

In late 2015, he withdrew from the Right Sector.

On 25 July 2015, at the request of the Russian authorities, Interpol placed Yarosh on its international wanted list.

In February 2016, he started a new organisation called Governmental Initiative of Yarosh (DIYA).

Since 2 January 2016 this request no longer appears on Interpol's website.

He lost the seat in the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election.