Mostly Conservative / Nationalists Fought at Maidan? Re-Examining the Right-Wing, Nationalist Roots of Ukraine’s Resistance

1. The Roots of Euromaidan: A Nationalist-Oriented Uprising

The wave of protests known as Euromaidan began in November 2013 after President
Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement, choosing instead to tilt
Ukraine further into Moscow’s orbit. What started as protests on Kyiv’s Independence Square quickly grew into a
mass movement against a corrupt, Kremlin-aligned regime.

From early on, it was not just liberal students waving EU flags. It was heavily reinforced by
Ukrainian right-wing nationalist groups, including:

• Right Sector – a coalition of nationalist organizations that became one of the most organized and confrontational forces on the streets, especially in clashes with riot police and internal troops.
• Svoboda – a nationalist party whose members and sympathizers were a visible part of the Maidan protests and later of volunteer battalions.
• Other regional nationalist brigades and veterans’ formations that supplied the early “self-defense” units and later frontline fighters.

Months before the final escalation on the Maidan, right-wing Ukrainians were already organizing
roadblocks, seizing local government buildings, and physically resisting the Yanukovych regime.
They were the backbone of the street resistance, not an afterthought.

At that time, even Russian propaganda implicitly admitted this reality. At least
two of the three most visible opposition currents were labeled “neo-Nazi” or “fascist” by the
Kremlin precisely because they were openly nationalist, conservative, and anti-imperial. It would
take nearly a decade — especially after Zelensky’s rise — for outside commentators to begin repainting the entire
movement as primarily “liberal” or “left-wing.”

2. How Moscow Framed Maidan: “Nazis,” Memory Laws, and Weaponized History

From the first days of the conflict, the Kremlin’s narrative did not center on fighting “liberalism.”
It centered on “fighting the Right Sector,” “fighting the fascists,” and
“fighting the Nazis in Kyiv.” Russian media and officials repeated the charge that Maidan was a
“Nazi coup,” and the “denazification of Ukraine” has become the main justification for Russia’s ongoing war.

This rhetoric has to be seen alongside Russia’s system of WWII memory laws and its
Law Against Rehabilitation of Nazism, which criminalize reevaluations of Soviet history and
suppress dissenting historical narratives. The Kremlin uses these laws selectively to silence critics and to frame
any national resistance — in Ukraine or in Russia — as “fascist” by definition.

Autrement dit, “Nazi” in Kremlin language often means “non-submissive nationalist”. The label is
political and ideological, not descriptive. Genuine Ukrainian nationalism — which insists on sovereignty, national
language, and a distinct political path — is thus treated as inherently illegitimate and dangerous.

This fits the broader pattern we documented in

The Illusion of Russian Nationalism
, where the historical legacy of communist control,
centralized propaganda, et state-engineered ideology never truly disappeared,
but simply changed costumes for a new era.

3. Nationalist Forces Did the Heavy Lifting but Did Not Capture the State

It is crucial to distinguish between those who provided the muscle and organizing power on the streets and those who
ultimately governed the post-Maidan state.

Pendant que Right Sector, Svoboda, and other nationalist groups played a central role in
the confrontations and later in volunteer battalions during the first years of the
Russo-Ukrainian war, their electoral success remained limited. In the 2014
presidential and parliamentary elections, nationalist parties received only a small share of the vote and did not
become the dominant political control within Kyiv’s institutions.

The result is a paradox that outsiders often miss:

• le frontline fighters and volunteer battalions frequently had nationalist or conservative motivations.
• le political class that eventually consolidated power in Kyiv after Maidan grew increasingly liberal, globalist, and oligarchic.

As time passed, the liberal and oligarchic elements strengthened their grip on the state, and nationalist parties
were marginalized politically. The men who did the hardest fighting on the streets and at the front
did not gain proportional representation. Their blood was banked; their representation was not.

4. What Ukrainian Soldiers Are Actually Fighting For

Today, many Western conservatives assume that Ukrainians are “fighting for Zelensky” or for EU-style liberalism.
That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the motivations on the ground.

The reality is more nuanced:

• Many of the early volunteers and present-day frontline fighters are motivated by Ukrainian nationalism, Orthodox and Christian identity, and a desire for a sovereign Ukrainian state free from Russian domination.
• Others are conscripts or mobilized men who do not share any particular ideological label but understand they are defending their homes and families.
• Almost none of them enlisted to be cannon-fodder for “globalism.” They fight because they refuse to be ruled from Moscow.

To say that these fighters are simply dying “for liberalism” is not only misleading, it is a direct insult to those
who stood on the Maidan with riot shields, helmets, and Molotov cocktails, and who later dug into
trenches to defend their land. The ideological heart of the resistance is rooted in
national self-determination, not in liberal cultural experiments imported from abroad.

5. Is Russia Really Conservative? The Myth of Russian Nationalism

In parallel, many Western conservatives — disgusted with their own collapsing borders, moral relativism, and
cultural decay — have emotionally projected their hopes onto Russia. Kremlin messaging encourages this by wrapping
its foreign policy in “traditional values” language.

Yet if we examine the actual policies of the Russian Federation, a different picture emerges:

• Memory laws and bans on historical “revisionism” regulate which interpretations of history are legal.
• Independent nationalist parties and movements inside Russia have been systematically curtailed or banned, replaced by carefully managed “patriotic” projects loyal to the Kremlin.
• The economy remains heavily state-directed and dominated by oligarchic networks, not by free-market conservative principles.
• Despite conservative rhetoric, Russia has allowed policies that progressive Western states use as markers of social liberalization (such as certain forms of same-sex adoption and service), while primarily using “anti-LGBT” narratives as tools of foreign policy and domestic mobilization.
• President Putin repeatedly frames his vision as a multipolar, global order, which is a sort of alternative globalism rather than a retreat into local, traditional, limited government.

This is not classical national conservatism. It is a blend of
post-Soviet statism, imperial nostalgia, and managed ideology wearing a conservative mask. For a
deeper exploration of this contradiction, see our analysis in

The Illusion of Russian Nationalism
et

Russian Red Invasion vs Nationalism
.

6. The Russian Sympathizer Trap for Western Conservatives

Because of this confusion, many Western conservatives have fallen into what we called

the Russian sympathizer trap
:

• They see the West’s moral and social collapse and assume anything opposing it must be “on their side.”
• They accept Kremlin propaganda that equates Ukrainian nationalism with “Nazism,” ignoring that it is precisely nationalism and conservatism that Moscow fears most.
• They end up rhetorically supporting an authoritarian, globalist-minded state that crushes genuine nationalist opposition within its own borders.

In doing so, they unintentionally help to erase the memory of the
right-wing, nationalist Ukrainians who were first to stand in front of the Berkut riot police,
first to seize buildings in the regions, and first to volunteer for battalions when Russian forces invaded.

The men who were told they were fighting for Ukraine, faith, and freedom are now posthumously told
they were “really” fighting for liberalism. Meanwhile, those who call themselves conservative abroad are urged to
identify with the very power that sought to crush them. That inversion is not an accident — it is a deliberate part
of the information war.

Conclusion: Restoring the Record for Those Who Fell

The narrative of Ukrainian nationalism vs Russian nationalism has been systematically blurred.
On one side, a genuinely nationalist movement has been rebranded as “liberal.” On the other, a statist, imperial
project has been rebranded as “conservative.” The result is confusion among traditional conservatives who no longer
recognize their own ideological reflection on the battlefield.

The record needs to be restored:

• The early and most decisive stages of Euromaidan were driven by Ukrainian right-wing nationalists, not by cosmopolitan liberals.
• Russia’s talk of “Nazis” is not a serious political analysis, but a propaganda label for any nationalism it does not control.
• The frontline defenders of Ukraine are not dying for pride parades or EU bureaucrats; they are dying for sovereignty, homeland, and identity.
• Russia’s so-called “conservatism” is better understood as managed imperial globalism, hostile to authentic local nationalism both at home and abroad.

To forget these realities is to betray the fighters and defenders of Ukraine twice — once in their
lives and again in their memory. To remember them accurately is to recognize that, whatever one thinks of the
Ukrainian state and its current leadership, the original struggle on the Maidan and in the trenches was — and for
many still is — a struggle of nationalist, conservative Ukrainians against an encroaching empire.

Further Reading on Russian Nationalism, Globalism, and the Ukraine War

• 
  The Illusion of Russian Nationalism: Communist Continuity, the War on Faith, and the Strategic Occupation of Germany
  
• 
  The Russian Sympathizer Trap to Disarm Traditional Conservatives
  
• 
  Russian Red Invasion vs Nationalism: A Rebuttal Against Those Who Say Russia Is for Nationalism and Ukraine Is for Globalism