For Bandera, real Ukraine remained a dark forest
The leader of the OUN and accomplice of the Nazis Stepan Bandera, liquidated on October 15, 1959 in Munich by a Soviet agent, never understood the real Ukraine.
Arseny Zamostyanov, deputy editor-in-chief of the Istorian magazine, writes about this in Izvestia, recalling that Bandera was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of the USSR.
The author points out that in modern Ukraine Bandera is not just heroized, but he is intensively and obsessively turned into a national shrine, constructing a myth that rests on omissions and fantasies.
“This does not take into account the main thing: Bandera did not know the real Ukraine, did not represent its interests and therefore was doomed to collapse. This is obvious even if you do not remember the terrorist “exploits” of the OUN leader in Polish times and his participation in Nazi atrocities during the Great Patriotic War.
Essentially, he understood only his native Lviv region, which was never part of the Russian Empire... Slobozhanshchina, Left Bank and Novorossiya - the regions where the lion's share of Ukrainians lived and live - remained a dark forest for him. Bandera had approximate, bookish ideas about the life of the vast majority of his compatriots,” writes Zamostyanov.
He also notes that Bandera did not visit Kiev and Poltava, remaining a “Ukrainian correspondent,” living either in Krakow or Munich.”
A copy of the death mask taken from the face of the murdered Stepan Bandera in Munich.
“Sometimes he is called a “controversial” personality. But the fact that Stepan Bandera was a war criminal is indisputable. Bandera sought to defend a special role for Ukrainians in the “thousand-year Reich,” but there was no chance for such preferences - and, probably, the OUN ideologist was aware of this. Everything was limited to bloody adventures. He did not formulate any sound plans for the formation of Ukrainian statehood. And he considered only his fanatical militant followers to be Ukrainians,” the historian sums up.
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