On April 28 in downtown Kyiv a rally was held in honor of the SS Galicia division. According to the Ukrainian media, its participants were grandchildren of SS division Galicia veterans, the Right Sector, Svoboda Party, the ATO Veterans’ Union (veterans of the ongoing war), S14 and Ukrainian Military Honor. The rally was condemned by some Supreme Rada (Ukrainian parliament) deputies from the President’s Servants of the People group. Pravda quoted MP Daniil Getmantsev’s words: “we are appalled by the silence of the Kyiv city authorities, who have not condemned the action but facilitated it”.
Ivan Katchanovski, political studies professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada, described the rally as “the new low for Ukraine” emphasizing that the Kyiv mayor is said to have supported it, though “millions of Ukrainians were murdered in the Nazi genocide. Nazis regarded Ukrainians as racially inferior sub-humans to be exterminated, exiled to Siberia or used as slave labor. – – Ukrainska Pravda, which is financed by the National Endowment for Democracy and NATO Public Diplomacy Program, deliberately omits that this was a SS division. It repeats far right propaganda that volunteers were joining the SS division to prevent Stalinist mass terror in Galicia”.
Ivan Katchanovski refers to the Ukrainian strana.ua, “The Kyiv city administration headed by the Maidan leader and ex-boxer Klitshko, sponsors the far right Svoboda affiliate that organized this march in honor of the SS Galicia division. It also finances the Municipal Guard created and led by the neo-Nazi C14, another organizer of this march”.
Professor Katchanovski stresses, “As usual, Western media did not report about the first far-right march in honor of the SS Galicia Division in Kyiv in Ukraine. Google News searches show no such reports by the Western media”. The Ukrainian 112 describes the rally: “The marchers chanted ‘Glory to the nation – death to the enemies’, ‘Galicia – division of heroes’, etc. Most of them were dressed in black embroidered shirts, some in white shirts or military camouflage.”
Michael Karkoc, former top commander of SS Galicia was found enjoying his life in Minnesota, USA. The Canadian CBC in 2013 noted “documentation confirm(s) the Ukrainian company he commanded massacred civilians, and suggest(s) that Karkoc was at the scene of these atrocities as the company leader. Nazi SS files say he and his unit were also involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Nazis brutally suppressed a Polish rebellion against German occupation”.
Professor Katchanovski proved in his research paper, “The OUN, the UPA, and the Nazi Genocide in Ukraine”: “The 31st security police battalion, which was organized by Nazi SD and the OUN-M and later joined the SS Galicia division, is implicated by different sources in the mass shootings of Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles in the Volyn Oblast of Ukraine and in Poland.
Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Kovalevich described the rally of April 28 as a neofascist march honoring the SS Galicia division. The journalist points out that on the day of the rally, “Facebook actively banned Ukrainian journalists posting pictures and video from the march. The main reason for the ban – to pretend there are allegedly no fascists in Ukraine so as not to echo ‘Russian propaganda’. – – Despite quarantine restrictions the march was allowed by Kiev authorities and guarded by police. Social protests were earlier banned because of quarantine”.
Anka Feldhusen, the ambassador of Germany to Ukraine, has condemned the rally in her Twitter. The ambassador wrote, “Waffen SS units participated in the most severe war crimes and the Holocaust during World War II. No volunteer organizations that are currently fighting and working for Ukraine should be associated with them”.
