KIEV, April 27. /ITAR-TASS/. An action of pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists dedicated to a yet another anniversary since the setting up of the Halichina Ukrainian division of the SS was held in the western Ukrainian city of Lvov Sunday, local news media said.
Several hundred radicals gathered near the monument to the most odious figure in the history of Ukrainian nationalism, Stepan Bandera. The organizers said about 3,000 people might take part all in all.
Earlier on the same day, former deputies of the Lvov town hall, who had seats there “in the first democratically elected” convocation in the early 1990’s, issued a highly untypical statement voicing protest against the street march of the neo-Nazis, which they said might inflict damage on the country’s national unity.
The Lvov town hall of the first ‘democratic convocation’ consisted for the most part of the deputies representing the Rukh (Pathway) party and other nationalistic organizations.
It is noteworthy that the municipal authorities in Lvov and numerous public associations have espoused a radically opposite point of view as regards the ‘marches of the embroidered blouses throughout all the years of Ukraine’s independence. Nazi ideology was implanted both at general schools (a special textbook on history was written for the Lvov school system) and at all levels of public life.
A testimony to this can found in a downtown restaurant styled to a dugout hut of paramilitaries of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which is profiled there as a highlight of cultural life.
Interior and law enforcement agencies in Lvov have traditionally turned a blind eye to the situations where the radicals beat up the veterans of World War II, who had fought on the Soviet side of the frontline.