District Administrative Court to recognize as unlawful the decree of Ukraine's former president Viktor Yushchenko to grant the title of the Hero of Ukraine to the leader of Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera. The court ruling says that those who died ahead of 1991, that is, ahead of the emergence of an independent Ukrainian state, can't be regarded as its citizens.
The Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky says that the decision of the Donetsk Court is correct from both a moral and a legal point of view. For his part the First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on the Affairs of the CIS Countries Konstantin Zatulin believes that Viktor Yushchenko had no right to grant the Hero title to Bandera. The point is that while signing the decree, he already knew that he would not continue in office, since the people of Ukraine gave him a vote of no confidence in the first round of presidential elections:
"Bandera is one of the odious and disputed figures of the Ukrainian history of the 20th century. Ukrainian nationalists regard him a fighter for the "national idea and independence". But the overwhelming majority of the people in Ukraine are of the opinion that he is to blame for the death of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Russians, and also representatives of other nationalities. Should we be objective, we should recognize that Bandera and his collaborators from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) were the allies of German Nazis and the performers of their criminal orders. During the Second World War they themselves made no secret of that. Just one example - on June 30th, 1941, only a week after Hitler's Germany attacked the former Soviet Union, the so-called, "Ukrainian national gatherings" were convened under the OUN auspices. They declared the creation of the "Ukrainian state", whose objective was to work in cooperation with Great Germany to establish a "new order" in the world. But as life has shown, Ukrainian nationalists were only an instrument in the hands of the Third Reich bosses, and their slogans for independence were not taken seriously in Berlin".
The heroization of Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists has had a negative impact on Ukraine's image. It was denounced by Russia, the EU states, and especially, by Poland and Israel. Therefore, many people believe that the ruling of the Donetsk Court is actually the first attempt of the new Ukrainian leadership to get rid of the negative tendencies, which do not meet the character of normal relations between Ukraine and its neighbours. Such is the opinion of the General Director of the Centre for the Post-Soviet Space Studies Alexei Vlasov:
"The judicial power, one way or another, will make efforts to fit itself into a cautious but consistent course, aimed at ironing out historical conflicts and at the renunciation of the heroization of representatives of the Ukrainian National Movement during the Second World War as the main paradigm for the formation of a new national ideology. And this is undoubtedly a positive signal".
The legal assessment of the heroization of Bandera and his collaborators has been given. Next in turn is a political assessment. At the beginning of March Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich made it clear that he would utter his weighty word on that score.
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