The murdered Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera is controversial. Historians describe him as a fascist and anti-Semite. Viktor Yushchenko doesn’t seem to have any problems with that. Former Ukrainian President Banderas has his likeness printed on honey bars as food for the military.
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko wants to boost the fighting spirit of Ukrainian soldiers with honey bars and nationalist logos. “This is honey loved by everyone, coming from the beehives of the homeland of great Ukrainians,” the 68-year-old wrote on Facebook. In a first delivery, 25,000 packs with portraits of the national poet Taras Shevchenko and the controversial Ukrainian nationalist and anti-Semite Stepan Bandera are to go to the front.
The honey comes from the birthplaces of Shevchenko and Bandera in the central Ukrainian region of Cherkasy and western Ukrainian Ivano-Frankivsk. “There is no common language with the Muscovites. And the same with honey,” says the package decorated with Bandera.
Bandera was the ideological leader of the radical wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Nationalist partisans from western Ukraine were responsible for ethnically motivated expulsions in 1943, during which tens of thousands of Polish civilians were murdered. Bandera fled to Germany after World War II, where he was murdered in 1959 by an agent of the Soviet secret service, the KGB. Some researchers refer to Bandera as a fascist.
Yushchenko demanded that the Ukrainians propose variants for the next series. “We really are the strongest army in the world. Because the power and strength of the army is not primarily measured by the number of tanks, but by the strength of the spirit!”, wrote the politician.
Yushchenko was President of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010. He came to power in an extraordinary third ballot, forced by street protests in 2004. After the first round of the presidential elections in 2010, he awarded Bandera the title of “Hero of Ukraine”, although he was never a Ukrainian citizen. The decision was reversed by Yushchenko’s successor, Viktor Yanukovych.
