Commentary

Roman Shukhevych joined the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) in 1923 and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1929. He became one of OUN's leading members as chief of its combat branch. In 1936 he was imprisoned by the Polish authorities for his revolutionary activities against Polish occupation of western Ukraine. During 1938-1939, as staff officer of the nascent armed forces of the Ukrainian Carpathian Republic, he fought against the Nazi-supported invasion of the republic by Hungarian troops...

The Revolution of Dignity in 2014 in Ukraine ultimately resolved Ukraine's geopolitical choice and defined the development of our country as a leader in democracy, reform, the rule of law and respect for human rights in Central and Eastern Europe. A successful Ukraine remains the only hope for Russians, Belarusians, Armenians and other peoples in the post-Soviet space to successfully build democracy and prosperous societies in their respective countries. Despite the Russian aggression against Ukraine in response to the democratic European and Euro-Atlantic choice of the Ukrainian people, despite the attempted illegal annexation of Crimea and the occupation of certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, despite ongoing armed aggression and war crimes by Russia, as well as attacks on our strategic infrastructure, and despite the daily killings of Ukrainian citizens, Ukraine does not betray its choice...

Disinformation: The 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division was a “collaborationist criminal fascist” formation and participated in various war crimes during WW2. Facts: Between 1943 and 1945, TWENTY-FOUR non-German divisions were formed in various Nazi-occupied European countries due to a shortage of German manpower, among them: Ukraine, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, France, Norway and others. All of these military units were designated as Waffen SS divisions. To be sure, the Waffen SS divisions participated in military operations ONLY, and NOT in police actions...

The Issue of the Ukrainian Police Under the Nazi German Occupation of Ukraine during World War II. There were TWO police organizations: The Ukrainian National Militia (UNM) formed by the Ukrainian National Government (also known as the Ukrainian State Administration) established by the Act of Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood (ARUS) on 30 June 1941 in Lviv (western Ukraine), and the so-called Ukrainian Auxiliary police (UAP) formed by the Germans. Nevertheless, frequently these two forces are lumped together. The UNM was tasked to secure law and order and facilitate Ukrainian nation-building. The UAP, which along with Ukrainians was also staffed with members of other ethnic backgrounds, was forced to assist the German occupational regime in its repressive activities in Ukraine. To be sure, the membership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) led by Stepan Bandera (which initiated the ARUS) were under strict orders NOT to join the German controlled UAP...

Disinformation: Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and all members of OUN(b) (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) were agents of Gestapo, SS, SD (intelligence agency of the SS and of the Nazi party) or Abwehr (military intelligence organization). They were carrying out the orders of these services. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was established by the special services of the Third Reich and was fighting alongside Hitler supporters. Facts: In the 1930s the OUN started cooperating with Germany for geopolitical reasons – as Germany was a strategic opponent of Poland and Russia. Back in the 1920s the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO, a predecessor to the OUN) was in touch with intelligence services of the democratic Weimar Republic. After the Nazis came to power, Germany actively pursued its intention to change the Versailles system. This coincided with the position of the OUN, as countries that were the winners of World War I failed to consider Ukrainian independence. It was the Paris Peace Conference that in fact legitimized the Polish state and its occupation of western Ukraine. Germany thus became a logical situational “ally”...

Disinformation: The UPA was “Hitler’s henchmen” and did not fight against the Nazis. Facts: Extremely brutal occupation policies of the Nazis forced the OUN (b) leadership to mobilize the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) by October 1942. The first regular UPA company (military unit) went into action on February 7, 1943, by overrunning the German commandant’s base in the district center Volodymyrets, Rivne oblast (province), Volyn oblast, and northwestern Ukraine. In the spring of 1943, the UPA constantly increases the extent of resistance. Their fiercest clashes with the Germans happened near Lutsk, Kovel, Horokhiv, Rivne, Kremenets, Kostopil, Sarny and Lanivtsi (Volyn oblast). During March 1943, the insurgents seized regional centers five times. At the end of the first spring month, the German officials reported to Reichskommissar Erichlast Koch that only two areas in Volyn were free of “gangs”...

We always suspected it. We tried to tell reporters, politicians, police investigators, even a few of those ranged against us in the public arena about what we were certain was true — but they wouldn’t believe us. I can’t blame them. There was no hard proof, not in the 1980s, to confirm Soviet agents of influence had initiated “active measures” to undermine the anti-Communist Ukrainian community in the West Now there is. Code-named Operation Payback, this plan was cynically orchestrated to exploit the understandable desire of the Jewish diaspora to see perpetrators of some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century — the Nazis — brought to justice. By the late 1960s, quite alarmingly from a Soviet point of view, Jewish and Ukrainian émigrés had begun to stand together in defense of human rights activists and refuseniks in the USSR. By propagating stories about “thousands” of Nazis supposedly hiding within North America’s Ukrainian and Baltic communities Moscow’s men effectively fragmented this common front... 

These various branches of the organization of Heinrich Himmler unfortunately wore the same uniform, though they had different insignia. [1] Polish eyewitnesses, and many historians are quick to identify various individuals as “Waffen SS Galicia” and the current fashion, even in Ukraine, is to lump them all as “SS-men”. But in actual fact, the subject of Rudling’s article, the 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1), did not take part in nor was present at the atrocity described, nor any other. It is true that some two months later the personnel of these police regiments were added to the actual 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) and many later took part in the battle of Brody on July 18-22 1944. The fact that many members of the Waffen SS Division Galicia that joined it at various times may have carried baggage of misdeeds and crimes committed previously, does not affect the record of the Division itself...

Disinformation: The OUN / UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists / Ukrainian Insurgent Army) were collaborators with the German Nazi regime. Facts: An image had been created that somehow, in contrast to WW1, the Second World War in Europe was actually a “good” war. Today we realize that in its essence this war was a conflict of two imperialist tyrannies: the German Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Other WWII combatants found themselves allied to one or the other side. Very few fighting forces can claim to have fought simultaneously against both tyrannies. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the UPA, mobilized by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to fight for an independent state for the Ukrainian nation, was one such major force. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was the underground political organization that struggled for that same goal and, as such, maintained contacts with many states including England, Japan, Italy, Lithuania as well as Germany for a decade before the war. The June 30, 1941 Proclamation of the restoration of Ukrainian statehood and proposed anti-Soviet alliance was a surprise and a challenge to the Third Reich. It took the German leadership but a week to begin arresting the OUN leadership and participants in that Proclamation. Hitler was thus forced to show his hand much earlier in his campaign than he would have liked...

Disinformation: The leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Stepan Bandera, “collaborated” with Hitler. Facts: On June 30, 1941, the Nachtigall Battalion reached Lviv, and OUN leaders headed by Yaroslav Stetsko declared the restoration of Ukrainian statehood and formed a government. Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko were arrested by the Germans in early July 1941 for refusing to withdraw the official Declaration of Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood of June 30, 1941 in Lviv. They spent most of WWII in Germany’s Sachsenhausen concentration camp in a special block for political prisoners. Bandera’s two brothers ( Alexander and Wasyl) died in Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz concentration camp. Bandera and Stetsko were released in the fall of 1944, placed under house arrest in Berlin, but refused to collaborate with the Nazis. In 1945 Bandera and Stetsko escaped during a bombing raid on Berlin, and went underground until the war was over...