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Churkin: Attempts to whitewash Ukraine’s neo-Nazis spell connivance with extremism

Russia's Ambassador to the UN says it is very alarming that Stepan Bandera’s followers these days stage marches in Ukraine, openly display Nazi emblems and have tangible political in influence in Kiev

Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin EPA/ITAR-TASS

Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin

© EPA/ITAR-TASS

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Russia indignant over Ukraine UN envoy's statements

UNITED NATIONS, March 07. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin has criticized attempts to whitewash Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with the Nazi invaders during World War II as encouragement of extremism and intolerance.

“It is very alarming that Stepan Bandera’s followers these days stage marches in Ukraine, openly display his portraits and Nazi emblems and have tangible political influence in Kiev. Attempts to whitewash the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA) are not only disgusting in moral terms. They are tantamount to the encouragement of nationalist ideology, extremism and intolerance,” Churkin told the media.

He was speaking in response to last Monday’s public claims by Ukrainian UN envoy Yuriy Sergeyev the USSR’s charges against Ukrainian nationalists presented at the Nuremberg Tribunal had been forged.

Churkin recalled there had been abundant documentary evidence proving the Ukrainian nationalists’ collaboration with the Nazi invaders.

“They participated in massacres of civilians and in punitive operations against guerrillas in Belarus, Ukraine and Poland,” Churkin said.

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He recalled the most heinous crimes the Ukrainian nationalists committed during World War II. In 1942, the Ukrainian insurgent army participated in ethnic cleansing in Poland’s Wolyn, where 100,000 were massacred.

On its website the Russian Foreign Ministry earlier this week published documents describing in detail the OUN-UPA atrocities during World War II. Russia has warned more than once that nationalists were actively involved in the latest turmoil in Ukraine.

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