Stepan Bandera (1909 – 1959) was a Ukrainian nationalist leader of the radical militant faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalits (OUN).
He organized the assassination of Polish interior minister, Bronislav Pieracki for which he was sentenced to death after being convicted of terrorism. The sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.
After the war, Bandera and his family moved to different locations in West Germany, settling eventually in Munich where he organized the ZCh OUN centre. He used false identification documents in order to conceal his past relationship with the Nazis.
As early as 1945, ZCh had established contacts with Western intelligence; from 1948 onwards, it was permanent cooperation with British Intelligence which helped to transfer couriers to Ukraine in return for receiving intelligence data. His efforts were largely thwarted by Kim Philby working inside MI6.
On 15 October 1959, Bandera collapsed outside Kreittmayrstrasse 7 in Munich and died shortly afterwards. A medical examination established his death as cyanide gas poisoning, it is thought administered by the KGB.
In Ukraine today he is celebrated by many as a hero, but the wiser regard him as a fascist, a Nazi and a terrorist.
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It is time to tell the truth about Ukraine
In his book The Culture of the Second Cold War, the renowned professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, Richard Sakwa, wrote this, “Truth is invariably the first casualty of war, but propaganda in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is exceptionally intense.” This makes identifying who is lying and who is telling the truth particularly difficult. Once having established reliable sources the task then becomes fairly straight forward.
The Ukrainian ‘president’ Vladimir Zelensky is not known for his close acquaintance with the truth, let alone reality. Essentially his presidential term ran out in May 2024 and he blocked elections when it was clear that his approval rating was a meagre four percent. He is no longer the legitimate president and should not be thought of as such. Certainly, he is in no position to engage in any peace negotiations as he does not speak for the Ukrainian people: the majority of whom must be pretty sick of him. Even should peace ensue shortly, the Ukrainian government has declared they do not envisage elections anytime soon. Of course not, with so many of their young men lying in premature graves, thousands upon thousands side by side, they would lose dramatically.
Zelensky’s reputation with his own people is in shreds. Apart from engaging in an unwinnable and disastrous conflict, he has introduced many measures in the country hardly likely to endear him to his people. In the true spirit of a dictator, he has banned the use of the Russian language in schools. Whilst the Ukrainian and Russian languages are similar, most of the exclusively Russian speakers, and there are around 11% in the country, find Ukrainian difficult to understand.
Approximately 58% of Ukrainians speak only Ukrainian at home. The 30% of the population who speak both languages will anyway have become acquainted with Russian in school during the Soviet days. The Russian TV shows and programmes which Ukrainians liked to watch were removed and Russian websites blocked from the internet. All news channels are government controlled. Cinemas are not allowed to show films in languages other than Ukrainian. Legal proceedings are required to be conducted in Ukrainian so that those who do not understand the language are forced to hire translators; this contravenes the Ukrainian Constitution. The Orthodox Church has been banned. Yet Zelensky to this day swans around the world as though nothing of this has ever happened. Despite this, the fancy cars that he and his cronies have acquired, the huge villas at home and abroad, the skiing resorts in Europe all bought from foreign funds testify to a regime that is thoroughly corrupt.
Zelensky has called the Ukrainian Russians in the east of the country a ‘species’, viewing them not as fellow countrymen, but something akin to animals. This is perfectly in line with the nationalist ideology that largely dominates the Верховна Рада України, the Verkhovna Rada, or Supreme Council of Ukraine. Since independence on 24th August, 1991 there has been as steady growth in radical nationalist organizations and they have been increasingly exploited as a tool for opposition to western style democracy. What they are seeking is the establishment of an ethnocracy very much akin to those found in the national-authoritarian regimes in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, more particularly that established in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Ukraine is only for Ukrainians. The motivating ideology is both racist and antisemitic. In their crazed thinking they have created their own version of the Aryan myth whereby the Ukrainian nation is seen as the progenitor of the Indo-European race. It is their destiny to lead the Aryan world in fighting the evil and destructive forces in the world behind which is a Jewish conspiracy bent on world domination. Now where have we heard that before? If this had not motivated such evil in the land, it would be laughable. Unless something of this ideology is recognized by those looking at Ukraine from the outside, it is impossible to properly understand the violent ethnic cleansing that began in Donbass and the eastern provinces after the appalling scenes of the Maidan in 2014.
The Ukrainian presidential election of 2004 was won by the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovich. However, the US backed the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ in support of his rival, deemed more amenable to the West. Ostensibly, funding came from the CIA front USAID joined by who other than the international investor Georg Soros. Tents were pitched and occupied around the government buildings in Kiev until the western-backed candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, won through.
On 23rd January, 2005, Viktor Yushchenko was inaugurated as president of Ukraine. This happened on the back of the mass public disturbances following the ‘Orange Revolution’ of November 2004 and a re-run of the election. He turned the country into an enemy of Russia, orientating the country to become members of NATO and the EU. It was a catastrophic turn of events. During his presidency also the various Nazi fascist parties and movements such as the All-Ukrainian Union ‘Svoboda’ and the ‘Right Sektor’ were taken into the government in Kiev. There is nothing ‘neo’ or new about these groups, rather they are fully-fledged Nazi Parties. They can be traced back to World War 2 and earlier. Historically, they are aligned with the ‘Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists’ (OUN) of the avowed Nazi, Stepan Bandera.
The OUN in co-operation with Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen, or death squads massacred more than 100,000 Jews in June and July 1941 in Lviv, in the western Ukrainian province of Galicia. In total alignment with their nationalist ideology, on 1st September, 1941 in an article entitled ‘Let’s Conquer the City’, meaning Lviv, the Ukrainian newspaper ‘Volhyn’ included this: “All elements that reside in our land, whether they are Jews or Poles, must be eradicated. …The empty space that will be created must immediately and irrevocably be filled by the real owners and master of this land, the Ukrainian people.”
In August 1941 the OUN had made a request to the Germans to create a Ukrainian Army to fight with the German Army. Despite pledging to work with Nazi Germany, the offer was rejected out of hand. The Nazis scoffed at the idea, and so Bandera’s men took to attacking Germans.
On 14th October 1942 in Volhynia, the OUN went ahead and established The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Українська повстанська армія, Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia, (UPA). Initially, the organization confined its activities to that part of the country. At the time both Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were part of what was the Second Polish Republic.
The Germans feared the Bandera Movement (OUN) was planning a revolt to establish an independent Ukraine, something Hitler and Nazi Germany would not accept. Indeed, in June, 1941 in German-occupied Lviv, the Nationalists had declared the creation of a Ukrainian State. Because of their hubris in refusing to rescind this declaration, Bandera and his deputy were arrested by the Gestapo. The order went out that all members of the movement were to be immediately arrested and after interrogation liquidated. The OUN was split into two groups, the militant OUN-B who followed Bandera, and the more moderate OUN-M led by Andriy Melnyk. From 1941 to 1943 over 80% of the OUN-B leadership was arrested. The OUN-M fared slightly better, but even their fascist sympathies failed to protect them from German disdain and the organisation was outlawed in 1942.
Tricked into a conference with the Gestapo in 1941, Bandera was arrested and carted off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Bandera’s family also suffered: his two brothers were killed by Polish prisoners in Auschwitz, another brother is thought to have been executed by the Gestapo or the NKVD. Bandera’s father was executed by the Soviets for harbouring an OUN fugitive. The Bandera sisters were exiled to a Siberian Gulag by the Soviet secret police.
Bandera remained incarcerated until released by his captors in September 1944 in a hope that he could fight the Soviet advance. Bandera set up headquarters in Berlin, the Ukrainian partisans taking on the Red Army in a vain effort to carve out a free Ukraine at war’s end.
After the war, to avoid Russian agents, he fled to West Germany in 1945, but shuttled back and forth in various disguises between Munich and the Ukraine, bringing encouragement and funds to the partisan army. They fought on for four more years before being subdued by the Soviets.
Finally, using the name Stefan Popel, Bandera lived with his wife and three children in Munich, protected constantly by bodyguards. In 1959, Bandera was assassinated by a KGB agent. On this fateful occasion, he left his modest apartment and went back upstairs for something he had forgotten, leaving his bodyguard waiting in the street. A moment later there was a cry, and neighbours found him lying with a broken neck on the stair landing. An autopsy disclosed the real cause of death: cyanide. The Munich police conveniently maintained the circumstantial evidence indicated suicide. Bandera’s followers were convinced that he “died a hero’s death at the Bolshevists’ hands.” At Munich’s Waldfriedhof, Bandera’s coffin, draped with the blue-and-yellow banner of Ukrainian independence, was lowered into a simple grave hallowed by an urn full of Ukrainian soil, a practice followed by many Ukrainian Nationalists to this day.
Despite everything, the occupying authorities were keen to make use of tensions between the quarrelling groups. They deployed the notorious Ukrainische Hilfspolizei – now renamed Schutzmannschaft – in rounding up Jews and attacks against Soviet partisans. They played a crucial role in the murder of 200,000 Jews in Volhynia in the latter part of 1942. Many of these men left the police later to join the UPA and OUN.
By June 1943, it became clear that the Red Army was advancing rapidly in the East. In the light of a possible German defeat, Dmytro Klyachkivsky, commander of the UPA-North, opened the way to yet more bloodletting with the order that “As the German armies withdraw, we should take advantage of this convenient moment for liquidating the entire male population in the age from 16 up to 60 years. We cannot lose this fight, and it is necessary at all costs to weaken Polish forces. Villages and settlements lying next to the massive forests should disappear from the face of the earth.”
Homes were torched and helpless peasants run through with pitchforks and farm tools, filling history with accounts of bayoneted babies and mutilated bodies left hanging in warning. Ukrainians in mixed villages were coerced by the UPA with promises of confiscated farms to join the horror or flee, and at least 1,341 risked their lives – and at least 384 lost them – sheltering or warning their Polish friends. In mixed families the UPA’s order was unambiguous: kill the Polish spouse and any children resulting from the marriage.
By October 1943 upwards of 15,000 Poles had been murdered in Volhynia, but the nightmare was now moving toward Eastern Galicia, that was bloated with Polish refugees. The methodology was the same and one Pole, Jan Zaleski, recalled in that “the slaughter lasted almost all night. We heard terrible cries, the roar of cattle burning alive, shooting. It seemed that Antichrist himself began his activity!”
The West and the British in particular hoped to use what was left of the OUN and UPA to harass the Soviets in Ukraine. FROM December 1945 into 1946 the Russians mounted over 15,500 operations in which 4,200 people were killed and a further 9,400 were arrested. From that time and until 1953 they went on to kill a further 153,000, arrested 134,000 UPA members. 66,000 families comprising 204,000 were forcibly deported to Siberia. In the meantime, MI6 as they are want to do in such circumstances were training some of the Ukrainian fighters and parachuting them into Ukraine from unmarked planes flying from bases in Cyprus and Malta. Practically all of these planes, however, intercepted and most of those dropped were executed. One MI6 agent with knowledge of what was going on was Kim Philby and working together with Anthony Blunt the Soviet security forces were alerted as to the planned drops.
The United States has long entertained the wish to dominate Europe completely. Hapless European politicians have been content to hail slavery as liberation. A tool in US hands has been the Nazi regime in Kiev. Economic hardship is slowly engulfing the whole of Europe, partly due to crazy environmental policies, but equally because the long-established energy relations with Russia are now severed, Europe’s leaders wilfully cutting off supplies of Russian gas. This is an unimaginable act of self-destruction. Then on Wednesday, New Year’s Day 2025, the Ukrainian regime in Kiev closed down the last supply route of Russian gas to the EU. Few in Europe seem to appreciate what is going on. One such is Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico who condemned what he called Ukraine’s sabotage of Europe’s energy supply and its economies. The transit route through Ukraine supplied Slovakia, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic. Now they are forced to seek alternative supplies at a much higher price. The more recent Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines ran 1200 km under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. The sabotage of these lines is said to have been carried out either by the UK or USA, but certainly under the orders of Joe Biden. All major Russian natural gas lines to Europe have been closed down. The winners are the other sources of gas such as Azerbaijan and Algeria, but above all the United States whose exports of liquified gas to the EU have tripled. The extra costs involved, however, are enormous In Germany nigher energy costs have contributed to a crippling slump. The cost of US gas is between 30% to 40% higher than Russian gas. Europe’s economic demise is beyond doubt. The USA is using its European allies to further its own interests. Co-operation between Europe and Russia, particularly in the energy trade is something the USA has long since tried to undermine. Long term the USA hopes to displace Russia. The NATO motto seems to be: keep the Germans down, the Americans in and the Russians out. The Ukrainian Nazi Banderite regime has played the game well. pandering to Washington’s imperialist designs.
Let us remember Kiev is still a regime that glorifies Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators. The Ukrainian president, Yushchenko awarded Roman Shukhevich and Stepan Bandera title of ‘Hero of Ukraine’ posthumously for their “contributions to the national liberation fight.” At the same time the history of Ukraine was re-written with an emphasis on de-Russification and the glorification of figure associated with Ukrainian radical nationalism. This task was committed to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory. Yushchenko signed a decree in the final months of his presidency recognizing members of the UPA and OUN as fighters for Ukraine’s independence. His decision was claimed to be based on “scientific research findings” and the need to “restore historical justice and the true history of the Ukrainian liberation movement of the 20th century.”
October 14th, 2007 was the 65th anniversary of the founding of the UPA and Yushchenko ordered celebrations to take place. Since 2014, it has been commemorated as Ukraine’s Defender’s Day. A radical overhaul of the teaching of history in schools took place. Children from the age of three were to be told through songs, poems, stories and exhibitions like the ‘Holodomor Museum’ that Russia and the Russian people are the primary enemies of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. By the age of fourteen pupils will have so been indoctrinated as to be convinced this is all true.
The conflict in Ukraine has been surrounded with deliberate lies designed to create the desired narrative. Virtually in every case those lies told to keep the war going have been show for what they are and refuted even by the words of those originating them.
The West has persistently denied that this is less a proxy war than a noble cause to see Ukraine defended and Russia weakened so that it can no longer do the things it has been doing. Vladimir Putin was never deceived and saw the war in Ukraine as an attempt by the West to eliminate competitors by using s proxy force. Russia’s foreign minister said something similar: “NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russi through a proxy and arming that proxy. War means war.” However, the proxy war claim was confirmed in a statement by none other than Boris Johnson when he revealed in an interview: “We’re waging a proxy war, but we’re not giving our proxies the ability to do the job.”
Then of course another lie circulating is that Russia’s ‘invasion’ of Ukraine was unprovoked and unjustified. Furthermore, it is insisted that the continuation of the conflict is unrelated to NATO’s continued push eastward towards the borders of Russia. This is untrue. Stoltenberg said in September 2023 that Vladimir Putin sent a draft treaty in 2021 for NATO to sign promising no more NATO enlargement. This was a pre-condition for not entering Ukraine. With his usual arrogance, Stoltenberg added, “when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.” Zelensky also refuted the lie in an interview in March 2022 when he said that the promise not to join NATO “was the first fundamental point for the Russian Federation,” adding, “as far as I remember, they started a war because of this.”
Another perpetual refrain brought out to justify a continuation of the war is that Vladimir Putin has no serious interest in any negotiations. This too is a blatant lie. No one wanted this conflict less than Russia. It is quite clear that statements made by western leaders, that it is they who are pushing for war with Russia. The Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande have each admitted the Purpose of the Minsk Accords was to lull Rusia into a ceasefire so that Ukraine could build up in the intervening time sufficient armed resources to achieve a military solution. It only later emerged that the whole charade of the Minsk Accords was not negotiated in good faith and that the West and Ukraine had no intention of implementing them.
Putin’s commitment to the Minsk Accords, on the other hand remained firm right up to the eve of the war beginning, continuing talks with the French and German brokers. He complained bitterly to French President Macron of the West’s failure to persuade Kiev to implement the agreements. Next day, Putin spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Schulz, suggesting a solution was still possible on the basis of Minsk. December 2021 saw Vladimir Putin presenting the US with security guarantees that included no NATO expansion to Ukraine. Even after the war began, Putin was open to negotiation, a tentative agreement between the two parties was reached in Istanbul in 2022, but was deliberately collapsed when British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, on a visit to Kiev urged the Ukrainians to keep fighting. It is thus clear who it was pushing for the war to continue. It was not due to any intransigence on Putin’s part.
Vladimir Putin consistently blamed the West for breaking its promise that NATO would not expand further west than Germany. In 2007 Putin complained, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”
Equally the West has insisted that no such pledge was ever made. However, declassified documents reveal that the 2014 NATO report claiming that “No such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up Russia’s claim has ever been produced” is a blatant lie. NATO Secretary General at the time, Manfred Wörner stated the “firm security guarantee” that “we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory.” He went on the stress that “the NATO Council and he are against the expansion of NATO.”
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was told by the then US Secretary of State, James Baker, that, “We agree with a guarantee that broadening of the NATO zone east of Germany is not acceptable.” Following his meeting with Gorbachev, Baker told a press conference that “NATO’s jurisdiction would not be moved eastward.” He also said that he had assured Gorbachev “there should be no extension of NATO forces eastward.” To Eduard Shevardnadze, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baker said that “There would, of course, have to be ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction would no move eastward.” Baker told both men that “If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch into the east.”
Not just the Americans, but also other Western politicians an diplomats assured Moscow there would be no NATO extension eastwards. German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher made clear to Shevardnadze that “For us, it is clear: NATO will not extend itself to the East.” Genscher stated in a speech in 1990, “ that an expansion of NATO territory to the East, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union, will not happen.”
The British too joined in this charade. Prime Minster, John Major, tried to allay Russian fears that “the Czechs, Poles and Hungarians will join NATO …nothing of the sort will happen.” Douglas Hurd, Foreign Secretary, joined in with “there are no plans in NATO to include the countries of Eastern and Central Europe in NATO.”
This issue, this promise at the heart of the dispute in Ukraine today. Clearly not Putin but the West is blatantly and dishonourably lying. Vladimir Putin would do well to regard all Western assurances and promises with a high degree of caution. They thrive on twisting the truth and lying trough their teeth and cannot be trusted.
There is yet another unfounded fairy tale doing the rounds. Namely, that it is Putin’s intention to conquer the whole of Ukraine. In the early days of the war Russian troops were stationed near Kiev, but there was no political decision to storm the city which they could easily have done. The purpose for their being there was to force Ukraine into negotiations over NATO expansion that the US had refused to enter into in 2022.
This very nearly came about as a result of the bilateral talks in Istanbul between Ukraine and Russia where an agreement was initialled. Those who were present at the talks in Istanbul testify to the fact that Russia would end the war on the basis neutrality and an agreement not to join NATO. The West, not wishing to see an end to the war, quickly put an end to any such agreement. Only then did Putin mobilize more resources, but halting his assault and withdrawing Russian forces from Kiev. Previously he had committed only approximately 120,000 troops to the operation. Certainly, this number would not be enough to conquer Ukraine. There is no evidence whatever that this was his intention.
Finally, another lie that is being spun is that once he had conquered Ukraine, Putin would move to conquer the whole of Europe. It is hard to imagine such absurdity. Biden and Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin claimed, “Putin will not stop at Ukraine.” Vladimir Putin as consistently maintained that the war in Ukraine was motivated by the desire to avoid conflict with NATO. If Ukraine were to be in NATO and wanted to take back Crimea by force which is sovereign Russian territory conflict with NATO would be inevitable.
The West’s perpetual and extravagant lies are exposed continually by its own actions and contradictory statements. These false narratives must be for ever exposed and shown up for the lies they are. This is none the less important because they have shaped the foreign policies of Western countries and poisoned the minds of their populations who have been fed on this diet of untruths through their own mass media.
The blatant hypocrisy of Western nations currently supporting Zelensky and his government in their war in the east of the country is breathtaking. Whilst condemning and in some instances imprisoning those they accuse of ‘holocaust denial’, western governments turn a blind eye to the World War 2 legacy of the Svoboda and Right Sektor parties. This means that NATO and EU member states are actively supporting Nazism in Ukraine. Images that are in most western countries illegal such as Hitler’s Nazi Swastika or the Azov Battalion’s Wolfangel SS of the Third Reich, are regularly to be seen especially in Western Ukraine. Those displaying such images in some places such as Germany and Austria and doubtless elsewhere could face a jail sentence or at least a heavy fine.
In a broadcast on Ukraine’s ICTV channel on 4th September, 2018, Andriy Parubiy, Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament proclaimed Adolf Hitler as a ‘torchbearer of democracy’. Translated, his words were as follows: “I’m a major supporter of direct democracy… By the way, I tell you that the biggest man who practised a direct democracy was Adolf Aloizovich [Hitler]”. Yet we hear not a squeak from Ukraine’s western backers, not a peep! Instead, they have nothing but praise for Parubiy and have invited him to visit their countries. It was Parubiy who in 1991 founded the ‘Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine’, a clear imitation in the name of Hitler’s Nazi or National Socialist Party. The name of the party became toxic and was later changed to the Svoboda or Freedom Party.
Together with Dmytro Yarosh, head of the Right Sektor and Oleh Tyanhnybok, these Nazi insurgent forces were heavily involved in the ‘Euromaidan’ coup in 2014 when the then incumbent Ukrainian president was overthrown and chased out of the country. Let us remind ourselves that the lineage of these men leads right back to the Nazi Stepan Bandera and the collaboration in the mass slaughter of Jews and Poles in World War 2. These parties have been generously supported to the tune of billions of dollars by Washington.
Recommended Reading:
Stephen Lendman (ed.), Flashpoint Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III
Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands
Although it is a very long and detailed book (632 pp), I particularly recommend:
Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist, Fascism, Genocide, and Cult
D. William Norris
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"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side ..."
James Russell Lowell