Many EuroMaydan participants were chagrined when a group of masked demonstrators broke away from what had been a peaceful mass protest, using a truck and brute force to storm past riot police into the presidential administration building on December 1. The strong-arm tactics, which police met with truncheons and tear gas, have sparked rumors of a provocation aimed at steering the pro-European demonstrations off-course. And some suspect the ringleader may be Dmytro Korchinskiy, the 49-year-old leader of Bratstvo (Brotherhood), a political organization that describes its ideology as “Christian Orthodox national-anarchism.”
Korchinskiy wields both pen and sword: a published poet and philosopher, he was also the founder of the 1990s ultra-radical Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA) and the head of its paramilitary wing. During his time with the UNA, Korchinskiy was given to fierce pronouncements, saying death was the only path to self-discovery. For Bratstvo, however, he has adopted a more playful tone, describing politics as a “fun” vocation that falls somewhere between literature and music.
Websites reported eyewitnesses as saying Korchinskiy, with his distinctive mustache, was visible among the crowd that first stormed the presidential building, but soon disappeared from the scene. The Interior Ministry later announced that as many as 300 Bratstvo members had participated in the siege. Critics have taken to Twitter, calling him a “cockroach” in the alleged pay of pro-Russian strategist Viktor Medvedchuk. Korchinskiy has denied the claims, saying Yanukovych is to blame for the protest’s violent turn. “If the Ukrainian people only disliked him yesterday, today they hate him,” he said. “This is no longer a public protest, it’s an uprising.”