THOUSANDS of Ukrainian nazis marched through the capital Kiev yesterday against polls in the eastern, rebel-held Donbass region — a key part of the Minsk II peace deal.

Members of military unit the Azov Battalion and its paramilitary youth wing, the so-called Civil Corps, paraded in martial formation alongside the notorious Right Sector.

Right Sector was the fascist muscle behind the 2014 Maidan Square coup against the government of Viktor Yanukovych and the chief suspect in the Odessa Trade Union House massacre.

The far-right mob marched in a pall of smoke from the Motherland Monument to Constitution Square where they threw flares, smoke bombs and fireworks at the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, and chanted nationalist slogans.

Organisers claimed 8,000 of their thugs turned out, although police put the number at 2,000.

Azov Battalion founder and leader Andriy Biletsky threatened to bring down billionaire President Petro Poroshenko’s government if it tried to hold local elections in the Donbass, which has been controlled by anti-fascist militias for more than two years.

“We must be vigilant, to expect this betrayal every second, because they will try to hold these elections quietly,” said Mr Biletsky.

“In case of treacherous elections, we will oust the parliament and the presidential administration and find new deputies.”

The Minsk II agreement between Kiev and the Donbass’s self-declared People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk calls for a ceasefire, a full prisoner exchange, local elections and constitutional reforms giving more autonomy to the regions.

But Kiev’s erstwhile far-right allies have balked at the idea of peace with the anti-fascists in the Russian-speaking east.

“Our main demand is not to hold the elections in Donbass,” Mr Biletsky said, “because … we will lose Crimea completely and Russia will disappear from all media as an aggressor country and the West will have the grounds to lift all the sanctions from Russia.”

Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014 following a plebiscite considered illegal by Kiev and the West.

Earlier this week, Crimean Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov predicted that friendship between Russia and Ukraine would blossom once a democratic government replaced Kiev’s current regime — which he said would rapidly collapse very soon.