You're reading: Out: Moscow Avenue, In: Bandera Avenue

The Kyiv City Council renamed Moscow Avenue in Kyiv after the iconic nationalist leader Stepan Bandera on July 7. Some Ukrainian nationalists cheered the decision that is further alienating Moscow, which has waged a bloody war against Ukraine, claiming 10,000 lives, since 2014.

However, the renaming triggered the historical debate between those who regard Bandera, who lived from 1909 to 1959, as a national hero vs. those who regard the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader as a pro-Nazi figure, despite the fact he spent most of World War II in a Nazi prison and was assassinated in Germany by a KGB agent.

Also, critics argue that the timing of the decision was lousy, coming as it did a day before the NATO Summit in Warsaw on July 8.

In Poland, Bandera is condemned for being a militant ideologue of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which briefly cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War II. Historians don’t have a single opinion on whether Bandera himself ever cooperated with the Nazis. His supporters in Ukraine argue that he fought all foreign repression, including Polish, German and Soviet.

Polish citizens claim he was involved in the Volyn massacre in 1943, which they consider as an ethnic cleansing of Poles, even though he was in a Nazi prison at the time.

“By their actions, Kyiv politicians weakened the position of the friends of Ukraine in Warsaw and worsened the situation of fellow citizens in Poland,” Olena Babakova, a Ukrainian journalist working for Polish Radio in Warsaw wrote in an op-ed for Novoe Vremya.

The renaming was preceded by a three-month public discussion on the Kyiv City Council website. Eventually, 55 percent out of all 5,700 votes in the poll supported the changing of the name from Moscow to Bandera Avenue. The decision awaits the signature of Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

The Moscow Bridge in Kyiv leads
to Bandera Avenue, known as
Moscow Avenue until July 7.
(Ukrafoto)

After the decision was taken, citizens launched four petitions asking to cancel the renaming. So far, the petitions haven’t reached more than 300 votes while 10,000 are required for the petition to be considered.

In Ukraine, Bandera was once declared a national hero by ex-President Viktor Yushchenko in January 2010, a month before he left office. But the Donetsk district court appealed this decision and the decree was repealed in April 2010, when Viktor Yanukovych was president.

The voting for renaming the street in the Kyiv City Council and commemoration of Volyn tragedy coincided.

The renaming was followed by the decision of Upper Chamber of Polish Parliament to adopt a resolution on recognizing the Volyn massacre as genocide on June 11.

“It would be virtually impossible to explain to the Poles that it was just a coincidence,” Babakova wrote of Ukraine’s pro-Bandera action.

Stepan Bandera poses for a photo with his son Andriy (L) and daughter
Lesya in an undated photo. He had one more daughter, Nataliya.
(Courtesy)

While visiting Poland to attend the Warsaw NATO Summit, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko commemorated the victims of Volyn tragedy, laying flowers at the monument in the Polish capital. Some 100,000 Poles were killed in the massacre, according to the Senate.

Volodymyr Viatrovych, the director of the Institute of National Remembrance in Kyiv, said the naming of streets is a domestic issue.

Moreover, he says that Bandera has no connection to the Volyn tragedy because of his imprisonment from 1942-44 in the Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen in Germany.

Viatrovych’s Institute of National Remembrance published archive documents from the Soviet main security agency KGB that explain the flow of confrontations between Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Polish Home Army during World War II. According to Viatrovych, documents confirm the Volyn massacre wasn’t genocide, but the constant confrontations between Ukrainians and Poles, accompanied with war crimes and killings of civilians.

The Kremlin, which has made an industry out of demonizing Bandera, reacted predictably.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said: “The fact is that the historical Russian-Ukrainian relations, Russian-Ukrainian kinship cannot be certainly eliminated with such renaming,” Peskov said.

Beside Moscow Avenue, the Kyiv City Council changed the names of four more city streets on June 7. They were previously named after Russian Empire military generals Mikhail Kutuzov, Alexander Suvorov and a member of the Bolshevik Party Nikolay Bauman.

Instead of them, the streets will be named after Polish educator Janusz Korczak, an officer of Ukrainian People’s Army Oleksa Almaziv, the commander of the Ukrainian Galician Army Mykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko, and writer Yevhen Hutsalo.