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02Jan23

Victory to Come When Russian Empire 'Ceases to Exist': Ukraine Parliament Quotes Nazi Collaborator

Verkhovna Rada tweet references Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and antisemite whose followers engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Jews and Poles during World War II

Quoting Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and antisemite Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian parliament on Monday declared that "the complete and supreme victory of Ukrainian nationalism will be when the Russian Empire ceases to exist."

"Currently, the struggle with the Russian Empire continues," the Verkhovna Rada posted on its official Twitter account, stating that Ukrainian Army Chief of Staff Valerii Zaluzhnyi was "well aware" of "these instructions of Stepan Bandera."

While Bandera spent most of World War II in a German concentration camp, his followers in the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its paramilitary wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, killing tens of thousands of Poles and Jews.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly insisted that Bandera and his men were not responsible for war crimes. In 2014, following the Russian annexation of Crimea, Kyiv also launched a major campaign to rehabilitate OUN and UPA -- although it has dialed down these glorification efforts since Jewish comedian-actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected president in 2019.

Addressing the Ukrainian parliament prior to the 2016 ceremony, Israel's then-president, Reuven Rivlin, excoriated lawmakers for glorifying members of the OUN, demanding that Kyiv "not rehabilitate or glorify antisemites." In a 2021 column published in the Ukrainian media ahead of that year's commemoration of the Babyn Yar massacre, President Isaac Herzog also warned against the temptation to "glorify World War II war criminals or rehabilitate wartime collaborators."

And following last year's annual march in Kyiv in memory of Bandera's birthday, then Israeli Ambassador Joel Lion tweeted that Israel "strongly condemn[s] any glorification of collaborators with the Nazi regime" and that it was "time for Ukraine to come to terms with its past."

The Israeli embassy in Kyiv did not release a statement this year, and an Israeli diplomatic source told Haaretz that "we've made our position clear many times, but apparently there is nothing we can do, at least at the moment."

"Bandera was the murderer responsible for the genocide of Poles in 1943-44, when UPA troops horribly killed about 100,000 Polish civilians," tweeted Kacper Payski, chair of the EU Affairs Committee in the Polish parliament.

"It is extremely surprising that, at a time when Ukrainian friends themselves fight with similar beasts, they continue to glorify this one."

[Source: Sam Sokol, Haaretz Daily Newspaper, Tel Aviv, Israel, 02Jan23]
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