Ukraine has in recent years erected many statues honouring Ukrainian nationalists whose legacies are tainted by their indisputable record as Nazi sympathisers. Such sympathisers included Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose followers acted as local militia members for the SS and German army. Ukraine has several dozen monuments and scores of street names glorifying this Nazi collaborator. Another one is Roman Shukhevych, revered as a Ukrainian freedom fighter but also the leader of a feared Nazi auxiliary police unit that was responsible for butchering thousands of Jews and Poles. Statues have also been raised for Yaroslav Stetsko, a one-time chair of the OUN, who wrote “I insist on the extermination of the Jews in Ukraine.” Far-right groups have also gained politically in the past decade, none more chilling than Svoboda (formerly the Social National Party of Ukraine), whose leader claimed the country was controlled by a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” and whose deputy used an antisemitic slur to describe Ukrainian-born Jewish actor Mila Kunis. Svoboda has sent several members to Ukraine’s Parliament, including one who called the Holocaust a “bright period” in human history. Just as worrying are the neo-Nazis who are part of some of Ukraine’s ranks of volunteer battalions. They are battle-hardened after waging some of the toughest street fighting against Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine following Putin’s Crimean invasion in 2014. One is the Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. In 2018, the U.S. Congress stipulated that its aid to Ukraine couldn’t be used “to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” Even so, Azov ended up being an official member of the Ukraine National Guard, which America has supported ever since. Then there was the incident in the Canadian Parliament before the speaker resigned after calling a Ukrainian Nazi veteran a "hero". What an embarrassing truth that was proving that Ukraine was and still is indeed a hotbed to Nazis.
