MPs in Western Ukrainian Lvov demand Poroshenko reinstate Nazi collaborators as national heroes
The city council of Lvov in western Ukraine has urged the Nazi collaborators and nationalist icons, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich, be reinstated as heroes of Ukraine.
“We demand the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko,
reissue a decree awarding Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich the
title of heroes of Ukraine,” says an address by Lvov’s city
council, as cited by Ukraine's UNIAN news agency.
According to the MPs behind the claim, the move would confirm
Poroshenko as “an independent president of the Ukrainian
state, for which the head of the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN), Stepan Bandera, and commander of the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Roman Shukhevich, fought and gave
their lives.”
Neo-Nazis march in Lvov 'in honor' of Ukrainian Waffen SS division
Bandera and Shukhevich were awarded the title of heroes of
Ukraine in 2007 and 2010 respectively, under President Viktor
Yushchenko, who came to power in 2005 after the Orange
Revolution.
But the Nazi collaborators were deprived of the honors as soon as
Viktor Yanukovych, who was mainly supported in the eastern
regions of the country, came to power.
In April 2010, Donetsk District Administrative Court declared Yushchenko’s decrees to award Bandera and Shukhevich the titles of heroes of Ukraine illegal.
There were several appeals to higher judiciaries against the Donetsk court ruling, but they were all turned down.
Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) nationalist movement collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II and was involved in the ethnic cleansing of Poles, Jews, and Russians.
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which Shukhevich headed, was OUN’s military wing.
In the summer of 1941, Bandera called on “the people of Ukraine to help the German army to defeat Moscow and Bolshevism.”
Whitewashing Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators ‘morally repulsive’ – Russia’s UN envoy
However, Bandera and Hitler failed to reach an agreement as Nazi Germany refused to support the idea of an independent Ukrainian state.
