An article by Andrey Lopukhov, Ambassador of the Russia to Malta, submitted to Times of Malta
“Old Spells Evoking Scary Ghosts of the Past”
In recent months we have watched with sincere astonishment the viral spread across Europe, including
Malta, of the old notorious slogan of radical Ukrainian nationalists, which as tens of millions of Russians naively believed had hopelessly “fell out of fashion” after the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945 and the Nuremberg trials. Like a new strain of coronavirus, it has spread by airborne transmission with unimaginable speed, infecting people who are not immune to various forms of (neo-) Nazi ideology.
In this letter we would like to provide the respected readers with a short guide to the meaning of the above-mentioned slogan so that from now on everyone understands what and whom he or she lines up with while saying “Slava Ukraini” (“Glory to Ukraine”).
"Glory to Ukraine" was the greeting of the Stepan Bandera's OUN, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who often used it in addition to the Fascist salute. Similar greetings were used by the Croatian Ustashe, the Hlynka Guard in Slovakia, the Spanish Falangists, and, of course, the Nazis. This is an analogue of the German greeting “Sieg Heil”.
Who was Stepan Bandera? Bandera was a leader and ideologist of a radical Ukrainian nationalists’ movement, which collaborated with Nazi Germany and carried out inhumane ethnic cleansing in Ukraine during World War 2. Bandera’s “kill order” of 1941 urged Ukrainians to murder Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Russians and fellow Ukrainians, including women and children, all described as “Muscovites”. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who didn’t meet his definition of a “genuine Ukrainian” fell victim to massacres motivated by ethnic hatred. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – OUN’s military wing, led by Roman Shukhevych – slaughtered over 100,000 ethnic Poles in the Volhynia region during the summer of 1943. OUN soldiers, who formed the Waffen SS Galizien Divisions, were directly involved in the violent suppression and liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, hand in hand with the Nazis in 1943. Bandera, Shukhevych and the OUN are fully and unconditionally responsible for these heinous crimes against humanity.
Of course, one might reasonably argue that our contemporaries are not to blame for the fact that Nazi accomplices and mass murderers have covered these particular words with disgrace forever. Someone might also claim that there is nothing wrong or shameful in a verbal glorification of his or her (or someone else’s) country. Finally, the most stubborn and knowledgeable might notice that the phrase “Slava Ukraini” was first used long before the establishment of Bandera's OUN. This could be a good try were it not for the well-known reply part of this greeting – “Herojam slava” (“Glory to the heroes”), which can be heard every time Ukrainian officials, including President Zelensky, salute each other or their foreign friends and patrons. The point is that in this exact combination these phrases, pronounced together as a kind of challenge and password, were designed and used exclusively by Bandera's bloody Ukrainian ultranationalists and their ideological followers.
Now ask yourself why the ideologists of modern Ukraine, out of numerous possible ways of verbal glorification of their country, have chosen to use exactly these words and to place them in exactly this order. Coincidence? We don’t think so. As well as millions of ethnic Russians in the Donbass, who already in the 21st century, especially since 2014, have had the opportunity to experience the practical manifestations of the new (old) ultranationalist Ukrainian ideology expressed by this slogan.
We appreciate that the people of Malta honorably preserve the memory of World War 2. Therefore, we were unpleasantly surprised when we stumbled in the pages of this and other respected local English-language newspapers across the notorious “Slava Ukraini”. Taking into account the above, we are far from the idea that those few publicly reproducing this infamous slogan have consciously intended to identify themselves with the “values” of its authors and have just been unaware of its original meaning and real history. Now this embarrassing gap in education is eliminated.
