"Ukrainian fascist and professional agent of Hitler": the Russian Foreign Ministry evaluated the CIA archival document on Bandera

The hero of modern Ukraine is Hitler's professional agent, Nazi and criminal. About this in his Facebook wrote the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, commenting on media reports about the CIA declassified information about the leader of the OUN-UPA * Stepan Bandera.

“How many times have we talked about this before the publication of these materials, and how many times cynically and brazenly Ukrainian leaders denied the obvious! What else needs to happen on planet Earth so that people stop mocking history, the memory of their ancestors, common sense? ”Wrote Zakharova on Facebook.

Earlier, the Zvezda channel talked about the released archival document of the US Central Intelligence Agency, on which is marked "For official use." The material published on the CIA website is the article "Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian State of 1941" from 1951 from the emigrant Menshevik magazine "Socialist Herald", which was published in 1921 - 1965.

“On June 30, 1941, the Ukrainian fascist and Hitler’s professional agent Stepan Bandera (the agent name Consul 2) proclaimed the reconstruction of the Ukrainian state in Western Ukraine in Lviv. On the same day, the so-called “state government” was formed, headed by Deputy Bandera Yaroslav Stetsko as Prime Minister, ”the document says.

• The CIA Archival Document - article “Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian State of 1941” from 1951 from the magazine “Socialist Herald”

The article notes that in the five weeks of the “short inglorious” existence of the Ukrainian power of Bandera, “five thousand Ukrainians, 15 thousand Jews and several thousand Poles” were destroyed. In August 1941, Lviv announced the incorporation of Western Ukraine as a territorial formation of the Galicia district into the Governor-General (occupied Poland), in Ukraine a “new order” akin to Hitler’s was introduced, explained in the material.

“Such, in short, is the story of Bandera’s short presence in power, which his followers, relying on people's forgetfulness, are now trying to present with a glorious and heroic episode of the struggle for the liberation of Ukraine. It would be better, especially for the supporters of a free Ukraine, to erase this shameful Nazi episode from the history of their movement and this shameful fascist episode that brought the country nothing but shame and grief, ”the article states.

It should be noted that on January 17, 2017, the CIA posted over 12 million pages of archival documents in open access, which were declassified between 2004 and 2006 in accordance with the American law on the exposure of Nazi war criminals.

Russian authorities have repeatedly pointed out the praise of Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, but this is not of interest in the West, political analyst Ivan Mezyuho told RT.

“This information is still that open secret, these are absolutely well-known facts. The Russian Federation has repeatedly presented a document on the collaboration of Bandera, ”he said.

According to political analyst Yuriy Svetov, this information should play a “certain role” in disputes and discussions around those people whom “present-day Ukraine makes heroes”.

“Who Bandera was was not a secret for any of the US presidents, but he was a situational ally, so he was used. A glaring situation when Yushchenko posthumously awarded Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine, ”Svetov emphasized.

It is worth noting that among the previously published archival documents of the CIA, there are also indications that after the end of World War II, the American intelligence services sponsored the OUN to “resist” the Soviet authorities.

In Ukraine, leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement of the Great Patriotic War, such as Bandera, Andriy Melnyk, Roman Shukhevych and their associates who collaborated with Nazi Germany, continue to be honored. So, in 2020, the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine will allocate 9 million hryvnias ($ 375 thousand) for projects of “national-patriotic education”. Basically, these funds will be directed to various organizations to carry out activities to perpetuate the memory of the OUN-UPA.

In addition, on January 1, a torchlight procession took place in a number of Ukrainian cities, including Kiev, in honor of the 111th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera.

This event was criticized by the ambassadors of Israel and Poland. In response to this, the press secretary of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Yekaterina Zelenko, stated that "every nation and every state independently determines and honors its heroes."

Later, the Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned the glorification of those responsible for the murders of Jews in Ukraine.

“The memory of the Holocaust and the fight against anti-Semitism, including the glorification of anti-Semites and Jewish killers, are not an“ internal problem ”in any country. On the contrary, it is the primary duty and duty of every Israeli diplomat, representing the common moral obligation of the State of Israel and its many friends around the world, ”the statement said.

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In addition, in mid-January, the National Anti-Terrorism Directorate of Great Britain (NCPTN) included the image of a trident, similar to that depicted on the emblem of Ukraine, in the "Guide to Combating Extremism" for British teachers and medical staff. This decision caused outrage from Kiev. On the eve of the police of the United Kingdom removed the trident from the memo after consulting with Ukrainian diplomats.

“Unfortunately, extreme right-wing groups practice the misappropriation of national symbols as part of their identity, so some national flags and symbols appear in our document,” the NCPTN explained.

* "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA) - a Ukrainian organization recognized as extremist and banned in Russia (decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of 11/17/2014).