Thousands in torchlight march in honour of nationalist hero Stepan Bandera

(1 Jan 2015) About 3,000 people marched through the streets of Ukraine’s capital on Thursday night to mark the 106th birthday of World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist insurgent leader, Stepan Bandera. The demonstrators glorified Bandera, who allied briefly with the Nazis, as a leader of Ukraine’s liberation movement. Many of the protesters carried torches, and some wore the uniform of a Ukrainian division of the German army during World War II. Some chanted “Ukraine above all!“ and “Bandera, come and bring order!“ Many of Bandera’s followers sought to play down his collaboration with the Germans in the fight for Ukraine’s independence as the leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, Ukraine’s foremost nationalist organisation in the first half of the 20th century. Bandera is a deeply divisive figure in Ukraine, glorified by many in western Ukraine as a freedom fighter but dismissed by millions in eastern and southeastern Ukraine as a traitor in the Soviet Union’s struggle against the occupying German army. Bandera was a leader of Ukraine’s nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s, which included an insurgent army that fought alongside Nazi soldiers during part of the Second World War.