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Stripping of Bandera decorations upheld
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, Aug. 2 – Ukraine’s Supreme Administrative Court on Tuesday upheld a ruling by a Donetsk court stripping posthumous decorations from Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, two Ukrainian nationalist leaders during World War II.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from former President Viktor Yushchenko, who jointly with other people had contested last year’s Donetsk court ruling.

Hero of Ukraine awards were given to Shukhevych and Bandera by Yushchenko in 2007 and 2010, respectively, but were contested immediately after the election of his rival, Viktor Yanukovych, to the presidency.

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 led the proclamation of the Independent Ukrainian State in Lviv on June 30, 1941. His forces fought the Soviets in western regions of Ukraine long after the end of World War II. He was assassinated by the Soviet secret service KGB in 1959 in West Germany, where he lived in exile.

Shukhevych was the military leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. He died in combat with Soviet secret police forces near Lviv in 1950.

Bandera and Shukhevych are revered in western Ukraine as patriots who led the struggle for independence from the Soviet Union and Poland.

But they are reviled in other, more pro-Russian regions as Nazi collaborators.

“Shukhevych and Bandera have long been the heroes of Ukraine in the hearts of Ukrainians. They were and will be the heroes. They fought for the independence of Ukraine,” Yushchenko said Tuesday through his press secretary Iryna Vannikova.

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

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.

The Donetsk court last year revoked presidential decrees decorating Bandera and Shukhevych on grounds that they had never been citizens of Ukraine.

But the court left intact similar presidential decrees after lawsuits had been filed by nationalist groups seeking to strip Soviet Ukrainians of the award.

This creates a controversy that may be indicating that Bandera and Shukhevych court rulings might have been politically motivated.

“It has nothing to do with judiciary, but has been rather reflecting political will of [Yanukovych’s] presidential administration,” Andriy Parubiy, a member of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine group, said. “We are preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court.” (tl/ez)




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