A lawyer from the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk has challenged in court the outgoing president’s decree to award the Ukraine’s highest honor to a Soviet-era nationalist leader. Viktor Yushchenko’s move to declare a national hero Stepan Bandera, whom many see as a Nazi collaborator during WWII, has already fueled firece debate in Ukraine. A parliamentarian from Sevastopol in the Crimea burned his passport on Sunday in protest against the move. (…)Â Olentsevych, who has earlier lost a similar lawsuit concerning the Hero of Ukraine title of another insurgent leader Roman Shukhevych, says this time he is “sure to win.” He says Bandera, a Soviet Union national, can not receive the title, which can be awarded only to citizens of Ukraine. Bandera, the son of a clerical family, was a leader of the Ukrainian national movement in Western Ukraine and headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1941-1959.
fascism is not an opinion – fascism is a crime!
