Ottawa’s failure to prosecute a former Nazi soldier amounts to its government “whitewashing” the crimes of Adolf Hitler’s regime, Russian Prosecutor-General Igor Krasnov has claimed.
Last September, SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka, 98 at the time, was invited to the Canadian parliament and given a standing ovation for his role in fighting “for Ukrainian independence against the Russians” during World War II. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had blamed a “mistake” amid the ensuing scandal. He claimed that his government was unaware of the former Nazi allegiance of the man.
Krasnov lashed out at Canada during a discussion with RIA Novosti about Moscow’s failed attempt to have Hunka extradited to Russia to stand trial for war crimes. The prosecutor’s office alleges that the soldier was personally involved in the killings of some 500 civilians in 1944, when a Nazi unit manned by Ukrainian volunteers, the Galicia Division, was deployed to what is now Western Ukraine.
“Not only did they refuse to hand him over to us, but they wouldn’t prosecute him themselves,” the official is quoted on Monday as having said. “It was total whitewashing of the Nazi crimes at a state level.”
The entire SS organization was labeled criminal during the Nuremberg trials, after the Nazis were defeated, Krasnov added.
Russia charged Hunka with the crime of genocide last October. President Vladimir Putin has said that his ill-advised lionization in Canada, which happened during a visit there by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, was a “manifestation of Nazism” that showcased a moral degradation in both countries. “They would ally themselves with anyone to hurt Russia,” he said.
In March, Ternopol Region in western Ukraine marked Hunka’s 99th birthday by awarding him the ‘Yaroslav Stetsko’ medal. His great-grandniece accepted the decoration on his behalf.
In addition to Russia, various Jewish organizations and Poland have denounced the honoring of Hunka. Jews, Poles and USSR sympathizers were the main targets for the Nazi auxiliary formation in which he served. Ukrainian nationalists sought to cleanse the territories they claimed for their would-be nation state from people they considered undesirable due to their ethnicity or political views.