ANTI-FASCISTS condemned Ukraine’s appointment of a neonazi militant as acting national police chief yesterday.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov named Vadim Troyan as head of the national police force on Monday after his predecessor Khatiya Dekanoidze resigned over MPs’ interference in her efforts to clean up corruption.

Mr Troyan was appointed Kiev’s chief of police in November 2014.

Before that, he was was deputy commander of the neonazi Azov Batalion and an active member of the fascist Patriots of Ukraine.

Several websites reported this year that Mr Troyan had organised surveillance of journalist Pavel Sheremet before his assassination in a car bombing on July 20.

Police later announced that an internal investigation had cleared Mr Troyan.

Ms Dekanoidze was one of several former Georgian government officials given senior posts in the Kiev regime that came to power in the 2014 Maidan Square coup.

Alex Gordon of Solidarity with the Anti-fascist Resistance in the Ukraine (Saru) said his British-based campaign’s warnings that the Western-backed Kiev regime “would increasingly depend on neonazis to maintain its power” had been vindicated.

“Now Vadim Troyan has been installed as head of Ukraine’s national police force, we have a corrupt, Nato-backed state in Europe with self-declared, open neonazis in charge of internal security,” he stressed.

He said all supporters of democracy should urge the British government to withdraw training support for Kiev’s armed forces and stop “propping up this corrupt oligarchic state alongside open neonazis such as Troyan.”