On January 23rd, the CIA declassified a trove of documents describing the Ukrainian National hero and known Nazi – Stepan Bandera.
The very first document that describes Bandera begins with the following [pdf]:
“On 30 June 1941, the Ukrainian fascist and Hitler’s professional spy, Stepan A. Bandera (according to his German appellation, “Consul II”), proclaimed in Lvov, then occupied by the Germans, the resurrection of the Ukrainian State in Western Ukraine. The same day a government was formed under the designation of the “State government” with Yaroslav Stetsko, Bandera’s deputy, as premier.”
It is noted that Bandera “with great zeal began to carry out the instructions of Hitler.”
According to the CIA documents, in the five weeks of the existence of the “state” of Bandera, more than five thousand Ukrainians, 15 thousand Jews and several thousand Poles were killed.
He is further classified as a member of the “terrorist organization OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). [pdf]
However, when the Germans occupied Lvov, Bandera evidently turned his back on his former terrorist group and began fighting against them, on behalf of the Nazis.
“In 1941 with the occupation of Lvov by the Germans, BANDERA split with the OUN and began such an intensive fight against it that it resulted in the murder of (fnu) SCIBORSKI, MELNYK’s representative in Zhitomir. Shortly thereafter BANDERA proclaimed in Lvov the “Independent West Ukrainian Republic.”
48 hours after that he was arrested by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp.
That seems reasonable, as he would likely betray anybody, after all he did betray the OUN, his own people.
The documents further discuss how he was assassinated in Munich in 1959, allegedly by KGB agent Bogdan Nikolayevich Stashinsk. [pdf]
The CIA furthermore considers to use Bandera and his collaborates in some way or another, at one point even suggesting to grant him a VISA, so he could discuss the “black marks” against him. [pdf]
In the end, the CIA questioned how useful that would be and whether he would be useful, and that even arresting or eliminating Bandera, during the 1940s would bring little result, as he would just be replaced by other nationalist leaders. According to the CIA, Bandera and all other nationalist leaders had to be collectively arrested or eliminated, in order to pave the way for a better-organized CIA-led operation.[pdf]
“No Ukrainian nationalist movement would be hamstrung through the arrest and repatriation of Bandera, because new leaders would step into his place and they would act exactly the same way as he did.”
The Ukrainian nationalists also didn’t feel like working with the CIA, because they considered the Americans would also betray them.
“If it should be decided not to use these people and their organization for intelligence purposes, it would be better to arrest not only BANDERA, but all the leaders whose names and whereabouts are known to us.”
In short, the CIA confirmed that had been known for a while – Bandera was a very apparent Nazi, who even betrayed his own people.
The spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, commented on the declassified CIA documents on Stepan Bandera. She said that the hero of modern Ukraine is Hitler’s professional agent, a Nazi, a criminal and Moscow has repeatedly said this.
“The hero of modern Ukraine is Hitler’s professional agent, a Nazi, a criminal. How many times have we talked about this before the publication of these materials, and how many times cynically and brazenly Ukrainian leaders have denied the obvious! What else needs to happen on planet Earth so that people stop mocking history, the memory of ancestors, common sense? ” – Zakharova wrote on her page on Facebook.
Header image: Stepan Bandera (center)
Notes:
Hostility to both the Soviet central government and the Jewish minority were highlighted at the OUN-B’s Conference in Kraków in May 1941, at which the leadership of Bandera’s OUN faction adopted the program “Struggle and action of OUN during the war” (Ukrainian: “Боротьба й діяльність ОУН під час війни”) which outlined the plans for activities at the onset of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the western territories of the Ukrainian SSR. The program declared that:
”The Jews in the USSR constitute the most faithful support of the ruling Bolshevik regime, and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in Ukraine. The Muscovite-Bolshevik government exploits the anti-Jewish sentiments of the Ukrainian masses to divert their attention from the true cause of their misfortune and to channel them in a time of frustration into pogroms on Jews. The OUN combats the Jews as the prop of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime and simultaneously it renders the masses conscious of the fact that the principal foe is Moscow.”
”Jews are to be isolated, removed from governmental positions in order to prevent sabotage… Those who are deemed necessary may only work under strict supervision and removed from their positions for slightest misconduct… Jewish assimilation is not possible.”
On 15 October 1959, Stepan Bandera collapsed outside of Kreittmayrstrasse 7 in Munich and died shortly thereafter. A medical examination established that the cause of his death was poison by cyanide gas. On 20 October 1959, Stepan Bandera was buried in the Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Munich. His grave was desecrated on 17 August 2014 by unknown vandals, who toppled the 1.8 m cross.
Two years after his death, on 17 November 1961, the German judicial bodies announced that Bandera’s murderer had been a KGB defector named Bohdan Stashynsky who acted on the orders of Soviet KGB head Alexander Shelepin and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. After a detailed investigation against Stashynsky, a trial took place from 8 to 15 October 1962. Stashynsky was convicted, and on 19 October he was sentenced to eight years in prison.