Introduction
Introduction On the first of January 2014 several gatherings in memory of Stepan Bandera took place in Ukraine. A report by Interfax Ukraine, a Ukrainian news agency, about the rally in Ukraine’s capital Kiev that day mentioned the following: ‘A torchlight procession on the occasion of the 105th birth anniversary of Leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) Stepan Bandera is taking place in the center of Kyiv. A column of more than a thousand people took off from the Kozatsky Hotel along Mykhailivska Street to Mykhailivska Square, and came out to Volodymyrska Street almost blocking the traffic.’ According to the news item, the column was headed by the leader of the political party Svoboda Oleh Tiahnybok, members of the Svoboda faction, two priests, and a girl in national Ukrainian costume, who was holding a portrait of Bandera. Many of the participants were carrying banners with nationalist inscriptions such as: ‘Ukraine Above All’, ‘Let's Recognize OUN, Recognize Stepan Bandera as a Hero of Ukraine’, flags of the Svoboda party, red-and-black flags referring to the OUN and burning torches. Furthermore, they were chanting: ‘Glory to Ukraine - Glory to Heroes!’, a greeting and slogan used by Ukrainian nationalists since 1940.1 A similar event occurred in Lviv, a city in the west of Ukraine, where - according to Interfax Ukraine - about a thousand people came together near a monument of Bandera. During the gathering, member of Parliament of the Svoboda faction Iryna Farion held a speech in which she said ‘people of such fortitude and ideas [referring to Bandera] are born once in a hundred or even half a thousand years..
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