Russian Unity

Russian Unity was a political party in Crimea, registered in October 2008. A Kyiv Court banned the party "from activity on the territory of Ukraine" on 30 April 2014. Party leader Sergey Aksyonov was instrumental in making possible the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. The party was based in Crimea, which has a Russian-speaking majority. The party was dissolved on 5 May 2014. Although the party took positions on a number of issues, the party's main focus was Russian language rights and promoting Ukrainian relations with Russia before the 2014 Crimean Crisis, in which it became supportive of secession from Ukraine to join Russia; after this occurred, it merged into the Russian political party United Russia. History The party was founded in Simferopol under the original name Vanguard and registered by the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice in October 2008. In August 2010 they were renamed Russian Unity. It won 3 seats (of the 100 in total) during the 2010 Crimean parliamentary election in the Supreme Council of Crimea. In the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election the party competed in/for 4 constituencies (seats), all of them located in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea; but it won in none and thus missed parliamentary representation. The party's best result was in constituency 1 (located in Simferopol) with 9.12%. In constituency 2 (also located in Simferopol) it scored 4.12%, in constituency 6 (in Feodosiya) 4.11% and in constituency 10 (in Bakhchysarai) 2.28%.