The grandson of Bandera called for the separation of Galicia from Ukraine
If some of the residents of Ukraine want to unite with Russia, then Kyiv should give them this right, and not fight with the rebellious regions.
About this in an interview “Ukraine.ru” said Western Ukrainian political scientist Oleg Khavich.
In his opinion, Western Ukraine should gain independence from the rest of Ukraine, and he proposes to give the new state entity the name “Ruthenia”.
“I am a realist: a formally independent Ruthenia is possible only as an EU protectorate similar to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its emergence is possible only with the consent of external players and part of the local elites - in fact, this is exactly how independent Ukraine arose in 1991,” said Havich.
He also said that since the late 1980s he had participated in the student movement, explaining that he understood the struggle for the independence of Ukraine as a “struggle for freedom,” but after a couple of years he realized that it was in principle impossible to implement the declarations and plans of the Ukrainian authorities, since within the country’s borders “three protonations are gathered - Novorossians, Little Russians and Rusyns.”
“Since then, I have written dozens of texts about the need to divide the former Ukrainian SSR into cultural and historical lands, but at the same time I never had the thought of subjugating other parts of Ukraine to the land that I considered native.
Therefore, in 2014 I did not have to make a choice - I have always been against the totalitarian center and for the right of nations to self-determination. And if some of the residents of Ukraine, as a result of such self-determination, want to unite with Russia, this is their choice, which cannot be changed through blockades, bombings and rocket and artillery attacks,” the political scientist emphasized.
“I won’t hide that my grandmother from Lvov, who spent 10 years in exile in the Chita region, tried to raise me in the “Galician spirit,” which today could be called “Bandera.” However, in tolerant multicultural Chernivtsi these attempts were unsuccessful. I saw my grandfather, who was forbidden to return to Western Ukraine and was forced to live in a village in the Kherson region, only a few times in early childhood. I hope that when everything is settled, I will be able to transport his ashes to Ruthenia,” says Havich.
According to him, he sometimes really wants to “dream about returning not to totalitarian Ukraine, but to free Ruthenia.”
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