Response of the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, to an attempt to white-wash Nazi collaborators by the Ukranian Ambassador to the UN
Yuriy Sergeyev, Ukranian Ambassador
to the UN: “Russia, at that time Soviet Union, tried to press Western allies to
recognize what you called banderas and others that they were killers. Why
Massive documentary evidence proves that the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) collaborated with the Nazis.
They took part in mass killings of civilians and punitive operations against
partisans in
On June 30, 1941 with the invasion of Ukraine by Nazi troops Stepan Bandera issued the “Act of Proclamation of Ukrainian Statehood” which declared that “the newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, which under leadership of Adolf Hitler is forming a new order in Europe and the world…”
In 1941 Ukrainian Nazis collaborators provided the majority of the executioners who murdered over 150 thousand Jews in Babiy Yar in Kiev. Gypsies and Soviet POW were also executed there.
In 1942 OUN was involved in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Volhynia (
In 1943 OUN’s campaign of mass extermination of Poles and Jews continued.
On January 28, 2010 Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed “deepest revulsion” at the decision by then president of Ukraine to honor OUN’s leader Bandera “who collaborated with the Nazis in the early stages of World War II, and whose followers were linked to the murders of thousands of Jews and others”.
On February 25, 2010, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in which it expressed deep regret for the decision “posthumously to award Bandera, a leader of the OUN which collaborated with Nazi Germany, the title of “National Hero of Ukraine”. The European Parliament called on the Ukrainian leadership to reconsider such decision and “maintain its commitment to European values”.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski stated on February 7, 2010 that OUN and
UPA “were engaged in mass murders of Polish civilians in the eastern
territories of the
It is deeply disturbing that the followers of Bandera are openly
marching these days in
