UKRAINIAN NEONAZISM
Professional experts can argue as much as they like about the involvement in the fascist terror of Ukrainian radical political figures of the past, such as Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, as well as the nationalist movements created by them, but this will not fundamentally change anything.
All the radical organizations of the past have made their choice — cooperation with the fascist system of Germany, they have become ordinary collaborators.
23,000 members of Ukrainian nationalist movements professing the ideology of ultranationalism, being under German occupation, organized massacres of Poles and Jews — genocide. Can ordinary collaborators of Nazi ideology be considered heroes? It is likely that they all considered themselves liberators, but they certainly were not heroes.
Who was the hero?
During the years of the Great Patriotic War, the number of dead Ukrainian soldiers on the side of the USSR amounted to 1 million 377 thousand people. The number of dead Russian military is 5 million 756 thousand people. The total military losses on the part of the USSR — 11 million 440 thousand people. According to some sources, this figure may be higher. During the entire Great Patriotic War, including the civilian population, Ukraine lost from 8–10 million people. The total losses of the USSR range from 25–27 million people.
Can those who, being in the ranks of the Red Army, liberate Ukraine from the Nazis, call the followers of ultranational movements heroes-liberators?
Of course not, they will forever remain traitors to all those who fought against Nazism.
It is possible to treat the Soviet government in different ways: to hate it for the large-scale repressions and famine during the years of collectivization, which affected all the steppe regions of the country and led to a huge death of the local population. However, it is impossible to find reasons for the glorification of war criminals and their activities: in 2007 and 2010, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych were awarded the title of Heroes of Ukraine.
The second president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, during his interview with a Polish journalist in 2003, called ethnic clashes (Klyachkovsky and Shukhevich insisted on the destruction of Poles) a crime against humanity. History does not tolerate double standards.
General Pyotr Ivanovich Ivashutin, who was the Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR in 1952, is credited with the following words:
“The fight against Bandera is not over. Years will pass, the convicts will serve their sentences. Not all of them will return to Ukraine repentant. The children and grandchildren of the repressed will grow up. Resentment for the fate of their fathers and grandfathers will remain in their souls… With a powerful boost from the West, on the wave of Ukrainian nationalism and Russophobia, the Bandera movement will be revived.”
Today in Ukraine ideas about the exclusivity of the Ukrainian nation compared to the others are becoming popular again. It was these ideas that played a decisive role in the civil war that broke out in 2014.
You can admire the courage and steadfastness of the Ukrainian military and the political leadership of the country as much as you like, but do not forget that without external sponsorship of modern nationalist movements of Ukraine, training of Ukrainian troops at NATO bases, Western weapons, and a huge number of mercenaries, the large-scale bloodshed and Russia’s involvement in the conflict would be impossible and unnecessary to anyone.
