MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia has launched a criminal investigation into Ukrainian nationalist leader Oleg Tyagnybok for allegedly fighting Russian forces in Chechnya, the powerful Investigative Committee said on Friday, in a largely symbolic move.

Mr Tyagnybok, the leader of the parliamentary faction of the Svoboda (Freedom) party, is suspected of fighting "on the side of Chechen separatists from 1994 to 1995," the Investigative Committee's spokesman Vladimir Markin told the RIA Novosti news agency.