2017-02-16 23:08 update: 2018-09-27, 00:01
Supporters of the Ukrainian nationalist parties 'Svoboda' and 'Right Sector' sing the national anthem during their march to mark the 106th anniversary of Stepan Bandera's birth, in Kiev, Ukraine, 01 January 2015. Archiwum Fot. EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY
Ukrainian nationalists Thursday hung a portrait of wartime Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera on the fence of the Polish embassy in Kiev in protest against anti-Ukrainian statements by Polish politicians.
Responsibility for the act has been claimed by the Black Committee, a lesser-known Ukrainian nationalist organisation.
In a statement sent to PAP the Black Committee wrote that the move was a protest against Polish demands for Ukraine to disavow Bandera as a national hero, forwarded by the Polish president and the leader of Poland's ruling party.
"We, citizens of Ukraine, are indignant over anti-Ukrainian statements by leading Polish officials. We mean President Andrzej Duda and the head of the ruling party (...) Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who have staunchly demanded that Ukraine cease to honour Stepan Bandera as a hero", the organisation wrote.
Polish Ambassador to Ukraine Jan Pieklo confirmed the Bandera picture incident to PAP and revealed that the picture was inscribed, "Our land our heroes".
The incident coincides with Thursday's visit in Poland by a delegation of Ukrainian MPs sitting on a Polish-Ukrainian consulting committee to hold its next meeting in April.
Stepan Bandera (Jan. 1 1909 – Oct. 15 1959) was a Ukrainian nationalist and independence leader. In the early stage of World War Two Bandera collaborated with the Third Reich but was arrested and imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp when he proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state. He was released in 1944 by the Nazis who hoped he could help deter the advancing Red Army.
In 1943-44 the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) of which Bandera with his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (UON-B) faction was a co-founder and a driving force for, mass-slaughtered 35,000–60,000 Polish people in the then eastern-Polish region of Volhynia, and 25,000–40,000 in nearby Eastern Galicia in a purge aimed to cleanse the areas of their Polish population known as the Volhynia Massacre. The full count of victims of the massacre is debated to date.
On 22 January 2010 Ukraine's outgoing president Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine, which was condemned by the European Parliament as well as Polish, Russian and Jewish organizations. The following state head, Viktor Yanukovych, declared the title illegal and in January 2011 it was officially annulled. In April 2015 Supreme Council of Ukraine (Ukrainian parliament - PAP) passed a bill lauding, among others, UPA soldiers as "fighters for freedom and independence of Ukraine" and forbidding the use of the word "genocide" in the UPA-UON context. The draft of the act was introduced by Jurij Szuchewycz, the son of UPA's commander.
Later in 2016 Ukraine blocked the launch and commercial screenings of Polish historical film "Vohlynia" ("Wolyn" - PAP) telling the story of the massacre of the Polish people at the hands of Ukrainians.(PAP)
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