You're reading: Higher Administrative Court rules Shukhevych’s Hero of Ukraine title illegal

The board of the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine has thrown out appeals by former Ukrainian President (2005-2010) Viktor Yuschenko and Yuriy Shukhevych, the son of the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Roman Shukhevych, against a ruling of Donetsk Administrative Court of Appeals declaring illegal an order conferring the Hero of Ukraine title to the elder Shukhevych.

This ruling was issued on Tuesday.

On October 2, 2007 Yuschenko issued a decree awarding the Hero of Ukraine title to Shukhevych.

In October 2009, lawyer Volodymyr Olentsevych, on behalf of Doctor of Medical Sciences Anatoliy Solovyov, filed a lawsuit in Donetsk Circuit Administrative Court to declare the decree on awarding Shukhevych the Hero of Ukraine title illegal and to cancel it.

On April 21, 2010, Donetsk Circuit Administrative Court invalidated Yuschenko’s decree on awarding the Hero of Ukraine title to Shukhevych.

The court ruled that the president had had no right to confer this title to Shukhevych, because he had died in 1950 and therefore he had not lived on the territory of independent Ukraine (after 1991). Consequently, Shukhevych was not a Ukrainian citizen, and this title could not be awarded to him. The court said that under the Ukrainian legislation the title of Hero of Ukraine could be conferred only to a citizen of Ukraine.