 On 19 August 1991, during the struggle against the State Committee on the State of Emergency, the UNS created squads of the Ukrainian People's Self-Defense (UNSO) in Kiev.The squads were formed around a small group of ethnic-Ukrainian Soviet army veterans of the war in Afghanistan.In December 1990 Yuriy Shukhevych, the son of Roman Shukhevych, was elected as the first leader of the UNS.