WARSAW, December 20. /TASS/. The Ukrainian parliament’s decision to celebrate the birthday of Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera linked with the massacre in the Volyn Region as an official holiday, is a painful issue for the relatives of those who were victims or witnessed the Volyn massacre, the leader of the Polish Association of Kresy Residents (Kresy, or Eastern Borderlands was the region to which Volyn belonged), Andrzej Korzeniowski, told TASS on Thursday.
He declined to comment in detail on what is going on in today’s Ukraine that venerates WWII-era quisling Stepan Bandera. "We are not an organization that is emotionally connected with national movements. Speaking about Bandera’s nationalism, this is a difficult and painful issue for us. We don’t want to argue with the Ukrainians about it. We only want to say that Ukrainians should not be tooting their horns about this," he emphasized.
The Ukrainian parliament ruled in a decree that from now on, the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN, outlawed in Russia) will be celebrated as an official holiday in Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian legislature, the Nazi collaborator was "an outstanding activist and theoretician of the Ukrainian national liberation movement," its statement read. Bandera’s 110th birthday anniversary falls on January 1, 2019.
OUN and UPA
The extreme right wing Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was active mostly in Western Ukraine. In order to establish an independent Ukrainian state, which was its chief goal, the OUN relied on extremist methods, including terrorist attacks. During World War II, the OUN collaborated with Nazi intelligence and waged a war against the Soviet authorities. In 1943, it established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
OUN and UPA mercenaries, otherwise known as the Banderites, whose name originated from Ukrainian Insurgent Army leader Stepan Bandera, were guilty of numerous crimes, namely participating in the Holocaust. According to a number of researchers, they killed at least one million people, including 200,000 Poles during a massacre in the Volyn Region, in addition to slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews, Russians, and multitudes of civilians.
In May 2015, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko signed a law glorifying the OUN and the UPA, whose activities had been previously designated as ‘struggle’ for the country’s independence. Monuments to Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich - the leaders of the 20th century Ukrainian nationalist movement - have been erected across Ukraine, memorial events and torchlight processions take place in their memory, and streets are named after them.