The symbols of the Ukrainian SS division "Galicia" are not Nazi.

This conclusion follows from the decision that the panel of judges of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal, located in Kiev, made the day before.

As specified in the press service of the court, the board satisfied the complaint of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (UINP) against the verdict of the Kiev District Administrative Court issued in May 2020.

The appellate court will publish information on the basis on which the decision was made after the full text of the decision is ready.

Recall that in 2017, in response to a request from the "Strana.ua" publication about the legality of public use of the symbols of the SS "Galicia" division, the director of the Institute of National Remembrance (then this post was held by Vladimir Vyatrovich. -

RT

) said that in the list attached to the law banning Nazi symbols, the division is not listed.

  • Vladimir Vyatrovich

  • AFP

  • © GENYA SAVILOV

After that, the head of the Sakcent Plus publishing house, Natalya Myasnikova, filed a lawsuit in court demanding that the position of the director of the UINP be recognized as contrary to the law and prohibit the propaganda of the corresponding symbols.

The lawsuit stated that the SS Galicia Division was a unit of the Waffen SS troops, which were recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal as a criminal organization.

Therefore, by his assertion, Vyatrovich distorted historical facts and exceeded his authority.

The director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee Eduard Dolinsky and the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the Servant of the People party Maxim Buzhansky also took part in the preparation of the claim.

The lawyer Lyudmila Braslavskaya defends the position of the plaintiffs in the courts.

Swing of justice

On May 27, 2020, the Kiev District Administrative Court recognized the position of the Institute of National Remembrance as illegal that the symbols of the SS Galicia division, which operated during World War II as part of the forces of the Third Reich, do not fall under the law banning the symbols of communist and national socialist regimes.

As the press service of the court reported at the time, after a comprehensive assessment of the case materials, the court declared illegal the conclusion of the INPU leadership that the symbols of the 14th SS Grenadier Division "Galicia" are not attributes prohibited in Ukraine.

The court also ordered the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance "to refrain from disseminating this conclusion."

  • Ukrainian right-wing radicals

  • Reuters

  • © Gleb Garanich

However, four months later, the Ukrainian justice changed its point of view to the opposite.

Commenting on the current verdict of the appellate instance, Lyudmila Braslavskaya said that the court's decision was a surprise for her and her principals.

She now plans to challenge the appeal decision in the Supreme Court. 

According to the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, Eduard Dolinsky, during the meeting near the court, a "team of support for the Institute of National Memory", represented by the "Right Sector" *, the "National Corps" and other right-wing groups, gathered.

“Now the Institute of National Remembrance can calmly heroize the SS Galicia division,” Dolinsky wrote on his Facebook page.

Dolinsky also said that after filing an application to the court, anonymous threats began to come to the plaintiff Natalia Myasnikova, and at the entrance where lawyer Braslavskaya lives, unknown people pasted leaflets with her portrait, SS runes and the slogan "Glory to the nation, death to enemies" ...

Ukrainian parliamentary party "Opposition Platform - For Life" condemned the decision of the appellate instance.

“In Ukraine, the rehabilitation of Nazi accomplices and Nazi ideology itself is in full swing.

Under Poroshenko, and now under Zelensky, the Ukrainian authorities are openly engaged in this, with the support of various national radicals, ”the party said in a statement.

The Opposition Platform believes that the court actually tried to overturn the decision of the Nuremberg Tribunal, forgetting about the horrors of Nazism.

The party demands that the authorities stop the campaign to rewrite history, and the current head of the UINP Anton Drobovich was dismissed.

However, according to an RT source in the Servant of the People party, the current President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has little interest in the growth of neo-Nazi sentiments in the country.

“The courts feel that the authorities have withdrawn themselves from this issue and make such decisions largely under pressure from nationalists.

Now there is no government on them in the country, and this ultimately translates into similar sentences, "the interlocutor of RT explained.

The RT source in the Golos party believes that judges are sometimes simply afraid for their lives, since no one can protect them from arbitrariness on the part of nationalists.

“In any country, people who put pressure on judges or participants in the process would be brought to justice.

But in Ukraine it is becoming commonplace, ”the source said.

Experts interviewed by RT agree with this point of view.

According to Mikhail Pogrebinsky, director of the Kiev Center for Political Research and Conflictology, the appellate instance issued such a verdict because the authorities had withdrawn from resolving this issue, and the courts were under pressure from neo-Nazis.

“In such a situation, it is easier for judges to make such a decision in order not to have problems with right-wing radicals,” the expert explained.

In turn, political scientist, associate professor of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University Boris Mezhuev believes that now in Ukraine there is such a political climate in which it is difficult for the court to make a decision on recognizing the symbols of the SS Galicia division as Nazi.

"At the same time, from the point of view of historical truth, such court decisions deserve condemnation - the SS Galicia division was engaged in genocide on an ethnic basis," the expert emphasized.

Ideological niche

Let us remind you that the SS Galicia division operated on the territory of Poland, France, Yugoslavia and Western Ukraine during the Second World War.

The structure came out of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), created in 1929.

The OUN immediately established ties with the German special services, and in 1938 split into two factions under the leadership of Stepan Bandera and Andrei Melnik.

At the beginning of 1941, the Roland and Nachtigall battalions were formed from Ukrainian nationalists, operating as part of the Brandenburg 800 special unit.

  • Soldiers of the 14th SS Division with the PAK 38 anti-tank gun on the Eastern Front, March 1944

  • © Wikimedia Commons

However, soon Bandera was arrested by the German command for embezzlement, and the Ukrainian sabotage battalions were turned into punitive detachments.

Historians note that the idea of ​​creating a Ukrainian SS division belonged to the governor of the Galicia district Otto Wächter.

80 thousand Ukrainian volunteers responded to Wächter's call to take part in the struggle against the Soviet Union in 1943.

In the same year, on July 30, the order of the chief of the SS Main Operations Directorate on the formation of the SS Volunteer Division "Galicia" was officially signed, and SS Oberführer Fritz Freitag was appointed commander.

It is noted that the division almost did not take part in battles, but was involved in punitive operations against civilians.

Thus, the soldiers of the 4th separate SS regiment, together with units of the UPA ** and the auxiliary police, completely burned down the mainly Polish village of Guta Penyatskaya, destroying almost all of its inhabitants.

At the beginning of May 1945, an end was put in the short history of the Ukrainian SS division - its personnel surrendered to the forces of the United States and Great Britain.

By the decision of the Nuremberg Tribunal, all SS troops were recognized as a criminal organization.

However, soon after the end of the Second World War, attempts to rehabilitate and heroize the punitive forces from "Galicia" began to be undertaken by the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada.

And after the collapse of the USSR, such ideas began to spread openly on the territory of Ukraine.

Already in 1991, in memory of the "heroes" of "Galicia", a memorial sign was erected near Brody, where in 1944 the SS division was surrounded by units of the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army.

Then only 500 "Galicians" managed to escape from the encirclement.

The divisional commander, Fritz Freitag, later explained this defeat by the "low quality of personnel."

In 1994, a special memorial military cemetery in the village of Chervonoe, Lviv region, was also created for the punitive forces from "Galicia".

Now, in memory of the division, annual parades are held in Lvov, and in a number of Ukrainian cities, in particular in Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil, streets were renamed in honor of the "heroes" of the SS "Galicia".

According to an RT source in the Batkivshchyna party, there is no consensus in Ukrainian society regarding Galicia.

“If the nationalists glorify her, then other people remember their relatives who suffered from the atrocities of fascism.

The worst thing is that there is no unified position in Ukraine on this, as well as on many other issues related to history, "the politician said.

  • Vladimir Zelensky

  • AFP

  • © CHARLES PLATIAU

Mikhail Pogrebinsky recalled that Nazism has long and stubbornly been rehabilitated in Ukraine, and, according to the expert, this policy is supported by a part of the pro-presidential Servant of the People party.

“The power is giving way to the nationalists in the ideological niche.

Many people around the president are indifferent to ideology.

And Zelensky himself, in fact, was not ready to fight the manifestations of neo-Nazism in the country, ”the expert noted.

Boris Mezhuev adheres to a similar point of view.

“Today in Ukraine there is a rehabilitation of those aspects of national history that were associated with Nazism.

It is about the erosion of the anti-fascist consensus that has developed in the world following the Second World War.

Moreover, this trend is noted not only in Ukraine, but also in other countries of Eastern Europe: in Hungary, in the Baltic states, for example.

And this position has already become a certain part of the Eastern European identity, ”the expert summed up.

* "Right Sector" is a Ukrainian association of radical nationalist organizations, recognized as extremist and banned on the territory of Russia (decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of 11/17/2014).

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