On New Year’s Day 2021, about 1,000 activists from Ukrainian nationalist political parties and citizens of Kyiv gathered at Taras Shevchenko Park for an annual torch-lit march to celebrate the 112th anniversary of the birth of Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera.
People march in a column through the city center to Independence Square. The march was organized by the nationalist Svoboda party. It was carried out peacefully without incident.
Bandera (1909-1959) is a deeply divisive figure. Many in Ukraine glorify him as the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and a fighter for Ukrainian independence. Others — including the Kremlin — demonize him as a Nazi collaborator. Historians have implicated the OUN in the killings of Jews and Poles during World War II.
Bandera was also imprisoned by Nazi Germany for leading a nationalist movement that would eventually fight against both the Nazis and the Soviet Union.
After the war, Bandera lived in Munich, Germany, where he was killed by an agent of the Soviet KGB in 1959.
