KYIV. April 29 (Interfax) - A spokesman for Ukraine's president on Wednesday denied allegations that the government was going to disarm the volunteer battalion Right Sector, a Ukrainian party put by Russia on a list of extremist groups.
"No pressure is being put on them. Allegations to the effect that [Right Sector] fighters have had weapons aimed at them are absolutely untrue. Nobody is disarming anybody, the negotiation process is going on," Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, presidential spokesman for the military operation in eastern Ukraine, told a briefing in Kyiv.
The chief of the armed forces general staff, Viktor Muzhenko, and Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh are permanently in contact, Motuzyanyk said. "They're in touch all the time, all organizational issues are incorporated into this negotiation process. There will be more information a bit later," the spokesman said.
Asked when the army would remove checkpoints it had set around a Right Sector base in Dnipropetrovsk region, he said: "When the exercise [of mobile airborne forces in Dnipropetrovsk region] is over under the schedule those checkpoints will be removed. When all the assignments set for that exercise are fulfilled. I'm not ready to say when."
A deputy chief of the presidential staff, Andriy Taranov, told Right Sector activists who had gathered outside the president's office building in Kyiv on Wednesday: "All problems concerning the voluntary inclusion [of the Right Sector battalion] in the armed forces as a separate unit have been solved."
He said Yarosh had discussed the volunteer battalion issue with Security Service head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko on Wednesday and was currently holding talks on it with first deputy chief of the armed forces general staff Serhiy Bessarab.