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Bandera decoration decree killed by court
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, Jan. 12 – The office of President Viktor Yanukovych announced on Wednesday that a court had revoked a decree to posthumously decorate Stepan Bandera, a nationalist leader during World War II.

The Hero of Ukraine award was given to the partisan leader by Yanukovych’s predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, shortly before he left office last year.

Bandera was responsible for the proclamation of an Independent Ukrainian State in Lviv on June 30, 1941. His forces fought the Soviets in western regions of Ukraine long after the end of the World War II.

The award dispute reflects the longstanding geographic divide in Ukraine between Ukrainian-speaking western regions and Russian-speaking eastern regions, and its impact on the nation’s politics.

Bandera, who was assassinated by the K.G.B. in 1959 in West Germany, where he lived in exile, is revered in western Ukraine as a patriot who led the struggle for independence from the Soviet Union and Poland.

But he is reviled in other, more pro-Russian regions as a Nazi collaborator.

On October 15, 1959, Bandera was found barely alive outside of Kreittmayrstrasse 7 in Munich. A medical examination established that the cause of his death was poison, apparently by cyanide gas.

On October 20, 1959 Bandera was buried in the Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Munich.

Two years later, on November 17, 1961, the German judicial bodies announced that Bandera's murderer had been KGB defector Bohdan Stashynsky, who acted on the orders of Soviet KGB head Alexander Shelepin and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

After a detailed investigation against Stashynskyi, a trial took place from October 8 to October 15, 1962. The sentence was handed down on October 19, in which Stashynskyi was sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

The Soviet Union actively campaigned to discredit Bandera and all other Ukrainian nationalist partisans of World War II.

In an interview with Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2005 former KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov claimed that "the murder of Stepan Bandera was one of the last cases when the KGB disposed of undesired people by means of violence."

Yushchenko, who had strong backing from Ukrainian-speaking nationalists in western Ukraine, handed out the award after losing a bid for re-election. The move was widely seen as a parting blow toward Yanukovych, the winner in the presidential race, who is from Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

Yanukovych and his allies in the Kremlin assailed the award, and Yanukovych suggested that he might annul it.

Bandera’s supporters have argued that he never had a close relationship with the Nazis, pointing out that he was later detained by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp.

Yanukovych had the award canceled through the courts, not through a presidential decree, apparently deciding that such a method would be less provocative.

In Ukraine, as in much of the former Soviet Union, the judicial system tends to have little independence, and typically follows the will of the executive branch.

With support from the new president, a Ukrainian lawyer last spring convinced a court to revoke the award, and subsequent appeals courts have upheld the decision, officials said.

On Wednesday, Yanukovych’s office indicated in a statement that the judicial process had ended and that the award was formally annulled.

The statement did not offer further comment. But Yushchenko’s party, Our Ukraine, denounced Yanukovych for “attempts to rewrite the history of Ukraine and to belittle — in order to please Moscow — the heroes of the Ukrainian people.” (tl/nyt/ez)




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