STATEMENT ON DEFAMING UKRAINE AND THE UKRAINIAN CANADIAN COMMUNITY
After Ukraine's loss of its War for Independence in 1918-1921, the country fell again under the control of neighbouring foreign powers, namely:Soviet Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.This set the stage for the emergence of a massive Ukrainian Liberation Movement spearheaded by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which duringWorld War II directed its struggle against Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.Ukraine became the main battlefield between those two totalitarian superpowers, and where their violence was especially and unprecedentedly extreme.
As a renowned American journalist Edgar Snow noted: "The whole titanic struggle [...] was first of all a Ukrainian war. No fewer than 10 million people had been 'lost' to Ukraine since 1941. [...]No single European country suffered deeper wounds to its cities, its industry, its farmland and its humanity." According to official statistics, Ukraine's human losses in World War II were up to 10 million dead:4.1 - military; 5.9 - civilian, which remains the highest casualty rate among all combatant nations in World War II.
Since the end of WWII, Russia, either in its Soviet incarnation or now under Putin’s rule, has spared no effort to defame the Ukrainian nation and its global diaspora, including the Ukrainian Canadian community. Hence, today as before discredited allegations from non-credible sources are again being dredged up to smear Ukrainian Canadians for their admiration for the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), including their leaders, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, respectively, and the Ukrainian liberation struggle against both Nazi and Communist regimes during WWII as a whole.
To dismiss these attacks and not respond would be a prudent course, so as not to draw further attention to them. By responding, it also could be construed as giving credence to the accusations. However, to allow lies and disinformation repeated ad nauseam to go unanswered, especially by a campaign reminiscent of Russian hybrid information warfare, can create a veneer of credibility that can be taken at face value by unaware Canadians, and that have even led to acts of violence against monuments and memorials. And, therefore, we are compelled to respond with the following for the record:
Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, agreed to form a Ukrainian Legion in the regular German Army comprised of two battalions, Nachtigall and Roland. On behalf of the Ukrainian side, the commander of the Nachtigall Battalion was Roman Shukhevych, and on behalf of the Germans, Theodor Oberländer.
OUN’s strategic objective was a plan to proclaim the restoration of Ukraine’s independence once the Ukrainian Legion was on Ukrainian soil. Nachtigall entered Lviv on June 29, 1941. The next day, June 30, 1941, OUN proclaimed Ukraine’s independence. In response, the German high command ordered the arrest and execution of numerous OUN leaders and many of the battalions’ officers and demobilized the battalions. Stepan Bandera and the Head of the Ukrainian Government Yaroslav Stetsko spent 3 years in the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen, while Bandera’s two brothers died in Auschwitz. Roman Shukhevych avoided arrest by going underground.
Subsequently, in 1942, many soldiers from Nachtigall and its partner battalion Roland joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, commanded by Roman Shukhevych. The UPA fought Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to the end of WWII and continued its armed struggle against the Soviets well into the 1950s.
Six separate and exhaustive investigations established that neither Stepan Bandera, nor Yaroslav Stetsko, nor the OUN, nor its members in the Nachtigall and Roland Battalions, nor the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, including Roman Shukhevych, participated in the heinous war crimes in 1941 and pogroms against the Jews:
1. The investigation of the Extraordinary State Commission on German atrocities, created by the Soviet government in 1944, identified the specific individuals and the branches of the German security services, who perpetrated war crimes and pogroms. The findings contained no direct or indirect reference, much less accusations, against members of the OUN, Nachtigall, or Roland.
2. Subsequently, the exhaustive Nuremberg war crimes trials, again, exhaustively reviewed the evidence concerning war crimes and pogroms and, again, made no mention of OUN, UPA, or the Nachtigall and Roland battalions. Moreover, a German document presented cynically by Soviet prosecutors (USSR-014) at the Nuremberg Trials referred to an order issued to the Einsatzkommando on November 25, 1941, which stated: “The Bandera organization is preparing an uprising in Reichkommisariat Ukraine with the aim of establishing an independent Ukrainian state. All members of Bandera’s organization must be arrested and, after rigorous interrogation, are to be secretly executed on the pretext of being looters.”
During the German occupation of Ukraine (1941-1944) up to 10,000 members of the Ukrainian liberation movement were killed by the Nazis.
3. The conspiracy was invented in 1959, following the assassination of Stepan Bandera in Munich, West Germany, by a Soviet KGB agent. The point was to discredit the OUN and Nachtigall. The KGB plot was an elaborate attempt to compromise Theodor Oberländer, the then Minister for Displaced Persons for West Germany, and to delegitimize the OUN as a national liberation movement. The allegation was that Oberländer, as the commanding German officer of the Nachtigall Battalion in Lviv in 1941, launched pogroms against the Jews.
However, after an extensive trial, the West German court concluded that there were no grounds for accusing Oberländer, Shukhevych, or anyone else associated with Nachtigall or OUN of any criminal acts against Jews in Lviv in July 1941. On the contrary, the court established that it was the German Security Service (SD), the Security Police, and the Einsatzkommando 5 that had perpetrated the mass murder of Jews and Poles.
4. The fourth investigation was at the request of Oberländer, himself. An international commission of eminent and unimpeachable international jurists, none of whom were German, convened in The Hague from November 1959 to March 1960. They unanimously concluded, “that the accusations against the Nachtigall Battalion and the then Lieutenant and currently Federal Minister Oberländer has no foundation in fact.” The commission further found that the KGB disinformation campaign was primarily designed to deflect attention away from itself for the assassination of Bandera by casting blame on Oberländer and the Germans.
5. Similarly, a report prepared by US intelligence agencies in 1952 established that the Ukrainian nationalist underground, OUN, and its military wing, UPA, were neither fascists nor Nazis, but rather a legitimate liberation movement of the Ukrainian people fighting for an independent state of their own, that they fought against both the German and Russian forces, and continued the fight against the Russian occupiers well beyond WWII. The report quotes the OUN as follows:
Among the conclusions reached in the US intelligence report:
6.Finally, the Canadian government’s Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada investigated all allegations concerning war crimes. At the request of Stepan Bandera’s family in Canada, Bandera was included in the investigation and, in its final report in 1986, the Commission cleared Stepan Bandera of any direct or indirect involvement in war crimes.
However, attacks against Ukrainian Canadians are not limited to the OUN/UPA and hate speech alone. A monument to Roman Shukhevych was again vandalized in Edmonton last year. And recently, a memorial to soldiers of the Ukrainian Galicia Division at the Ukrainian cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, where, inter alia, many Ukrainian veterans of the liberation struggle against both the Nazis and the Soviets are buried, was desecrated. Apparently, the perpetrators of these acts of hate speech and violence ignore that which doesn’t fit their narrative, including the definitive findings of Canada’s own Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals.
Notwithstanding the exhaustive investigations and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the campaign to delegitimize the national struggle for the independence of Ukraine by demonizing the OUN and the UPA continues. It continues because Ukrainians’ liberation struggle during the 20th century is an inspiration to Ukrainians today. The Kremlin and its fellow travelers abroad still cannot come to terms with a free, independent and democratic Ukraine, where its citizens of all religious and ethnic backgrounds, be they Ukrainians, Jews, or Russians, live in greater harmony and individually enjoy more freedoms than in any other country of the former Soviet Russian empire. Ethnic and religious tolerance is the hallmark of Ukrainian society.
Today, Ukraine is in a six-year long war with Russia. Resistance to Russian aggression has come at a high cost. Over fourteen thousand Ukrainian men, women, and children are dead, tens of thousands maimed, and nearly two million rendered internal refugees. No less costly are the consequences of Russia’s hybrid war tactics that penetrate deep into the country far from the battlefield, which disrupts the economy, and includes information warfare and cyber attacks on infrastructure, fomenting political turmoil, media manipulation, etc. There is no aspect of Ukrainian society that is not targeted by Russia.
A priority for Russia is to discredit the Ukrainian national liberation struggle as a source of pride and determination in Ukrainians’ ongoing quest to fulfill the hopes and aspirations of the millions of innocent Ukrainian victims of Russia’s campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing, a campaign designed to eliminate Ukrainians as a political nation worthy of an independent country of their own. Every day,Ukrainians of every ethnic and religious persuasion suffer directly and indirectly as a result of the Russian invaders. Irrespective of their backgrounds, millions of Ukrainians reject anti-Ukrainian disinformation spread by Russia’s hybrid war machine, including its agents, fellow travelers, and useful idiots in the West. Ukrainians honor Bandera and Shukhevych and OUN/UPA as symbols of resistance to German and Russian aggression and colonial occupation of their land. Bandera, Shukhevych, and their courageous freedom fighters sacrificed their lives for the independence of Ukraine and human liberties for all of its citizens.
In March 2018, the Government of Canada declared Mr Kirill Kalinin, an intelligence operative working out of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Ottawa, to be a persona non grata. He was subsequently removed from this country. Kalinin had been identified by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as responsible for orchestrating a campaign of slander directed against the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, currently the Deputy Prime Minister. He was also promoting stories about an alleged “Nazi monument” in the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville, abetted in his efforts by fellow travelers and other persons manifestly less interested in history than in perpetuating disproven allegations, even to the extent of provoking or indulging in hate crimes. The Moscow operatives’ campaign in Canada was supported by the Russian media with close ties to the Kremlin, including notorious TV host Dmitry Kiselyov (currently on Canada’s economic sanctions list), who broadcasted in prime time on a Russian national TV network a propaganda segment repeating many of the above stated lies, also attacking Canadian Members of Parliament and Ukrainian Canadian community organizations. In his conspiracy theory, Mr Kiselyov went as far as suggesting that Nazi-loving Ukrainians were running Canada’s government.
In the past and again today, Canada is the target of efforts to discredit the Ukrainian Canadian community, turn Canadians against each other, and undermine Canada’s support for a free and independent, democratic, and tolerant Ukraine. By seeking to tarnish the history of the Ukrainian people’s heroic and unrelenting struggle against both the Nazi and Communist regimes and the Ukrainian Canadian community for its long-standing defence of the liberation of Ukraine, they try to undermine our community’s reputation of respect for our fellow Canadian citizens and their ethnic and religious communities.
The current attacks on Ukraine and the Ukrainian Canadian community will not stand. We call on our fellow Canadians to reject purveyors of historical revisionism, hate speech, and disinformation. These attacks are designed to destabilize Canadians’ national unity and undercut our government’s opposition to Putin’s Russia and support for Ukraine’s quest to consolidate its hard-won independence and continue on the path to building a free and democratic society.
For additional information, please refer to the following links:
Herbert Romerstein’s analysis of Russia’s weaponization of information - Divide and Conquer http://www.lucorg.com/news.php/news/12337
CIA report on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the 20th century liberation struggle in Ukraine CIA report in the following link
Major events in the life of Stepan Bandera http://www.lucorg.com/block.php/block_id/27
