Ukraine celebrates 117th anniversary of Stepan Bandera's birth: where ceremonies took place

May the enemy continue to tremble at the name of Stepan Bandera! We cherish his memory, profess his ideas, and fight for Ukraine's independence

Who is Stepan Bandera

Stepan Bandera was the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists from 1940 to 1959. He was born on January 1, 1909, in the village of Staryi Uhryniv (then Austria-Hungary, now Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine). He was a member of the "Plast" organization, and from 1929 he was a member of the OUN.

In 1933, he organized an assassination attempt on the Soviet consul in Lviv in protest against the Holodomor, which was organized by the Soviet regime in Ukraine. However, instead of the consul, OUN member Mykola Lemyk killed Soviet diplomat Oleksiy Maylov from Moscow (according to some sources, the latter was an NKVD officer – ed.).

In 1934, the OUN organized the assassination of the then Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland, Bronisław Pieracki. He was the organizer of the so-called "pacification" (in fact, repression) of Ukrainians in Galicia: he was killed by OUN member Hryhoriy Matseiko.

In 1936, a court in Warsaw found Bandera and 11 other OUN members guilty. Bandera was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. But due to the division of Poland between Germany and the USSR in the autumn of 1939, he was released.

In the summer of 1941, in Lviv, Bandera's associate Yaroslav Stetsko proclaimed the restoration of Ukraine's independence. But the Germans, whose help in the fight against the Bolsheviks the OUN had counted on, declared the organization's members outlaws: Hitler did not need an independent Ukrainian state.

Bandera ended up in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, many OUN figures were shot, including in Babyn Yar in Kyiv. Another part of the OUN members began fighting in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) against German and Soviet troops, as well as against Polish formations of the Home Army and the People's Army.

After World War II, Bandera ended up in West Germany, but in October 1959, he was killed by KGB officer Bohdan Stashynskyi.

In January 2010, leaving his post, President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine, which caused a stir both inside and outside the country. And in April of the same year, Stepan Bandera was stripped of the honorary title.

Despite the ambiguous opinion of Ukrainian residents regarding his personality, Bandera's name once again became a symbol of the struggle for Independence. This happened against the backdrop of the Russian annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbas in 2014, and later - the full-scale invasion of 2022.

Recall

Earlier, UNN reported that a bust of Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa was unveiled in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.