Ukrainian singer Melovin has shared a video of himself performing a song celebrating ultranationalist Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera at a Gay Pride march in Munich, Germany on Sunday.
The clip was published on the artist’s social media accounts with the caption “Who said Bandera was a homophobe?” and featured Melovin singing “Bandera is our father, Ukraine is our mother, for Ukraine we will fight.” The large crowd, which was waving Ukrainian and LGBTQ flags, enthusiastically danced and sang along to the lyrics.
However, the video has triggered a backlash online, with many users questioning the need to link Ukraine’s national identity with Nazi collaborators such as Bandera.
Bandera was the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was infamous for its anti-Semitic ideology and active collaboration with Nazi forces. During World War II, the OUN’s paramilitary wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), was responsible for slaughtering tens of thousands of Poles and contributing to the Holocaust in Ukraine, which is estimated to have cost as many as 1.6 million Jewish lives.
Despite being internationally recognized as a Nazi collaborator, Bandera has officially been hailed by Kiev as a national hero since 2010. Ukrainian nationalists regularly hold torchlit marches and demonstrations in honor of his birthday on January 1.
Kiev’s public reverence of Bandera has drawn criticism from some of its Western backers as well as Russia, which has stated that “denazification” is among the primary goals of its military campaign against Ukraine.
Some comments under Melovin’s video pointed out the irony of Bandera being celebrated at an LGBTQ event in Germany, considering that the Nazis and the OUN vehemently opposed homosexuality. Hitler’s regime extensively persecuted gay men, often either executing them or shipping them off to concentration camps where most of them died.
“LGBT representatives glorify Bandera, who, together with Hitler, hanged representatives of all these LGBT people,” one user noted. Another commenter, apparently a supporter of Bandera, suggested that Bandera would “turn over in his grave” if he saw himself being celebrated at an LGBTQ event. “Do you think that the son of a Greek Catholic priest would tolerate such promiscuity and sodomy?” he asked.