UKRAINE’S communists vowed yesterday that they would participate as planned in autumn local elections — despite the government’s announcement on Saturday banning them from participating.

Justice Minister Pavel Petrenko signed a law that means “communist parties lose their right to participate in the political and electoral processes,” Ukraine’s national security council secretary Oleksandr Turchynov said at the weekend.

Mr Turchynov and Mr Petrenko are both members of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party, which claims to be centrist but has a military wing which includes the commanders of the neonazi Azov and Aidar battalions Andriy Biletsky and Ihor Lapin.

The ban affects three parties — the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), the Communist Party of Ukrainian Workers and Peasants and the Reformed Communist Party of Ukraine.

KPU leader Petro Symonenko said the order was aimed at outlawing the whole of the left.

“This reveals the true faces of those who declare their commitment to democracy,” Mr Symonenko said.

“It prohibits the alternative, forbids its representation and bans any opposition to the policy of impoverishment.

“This is the path to political and military dictatorship.”

But the party would challenge the ban, he added — arguing it had a “constitutional right to stand” which could not be “cancelled by the justice minister.

“I can firmly say that our political force is going to take part in the elections.”

The decree follows April’s outlawing of all communist symbols and monuments, as well as a prohibition on “insulting” the memory of nazi collaborators during the second world war responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Poles and Jews.

The “de-communisation” law, as it has become known, has been condemned by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Dunja Mijatovic as an attack on freedom of speech.

And Mr Petrenko confirmed that the bar on electoral activity is still intended to be a step towards an outright ban on all communist organisations’ existence.

Russian Communist Party general secretary Gennady Zyuganov spoke out on behalf of the embattled Ukrainian party, slamming the ban’s “pure arbitrariness … [it is] a reprisal against political opponents.”