The son of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) commander-in-chief Roman Shukhevych, Yuriy Shukhevych, is set to appeal against the decision by the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine, stripping his father of the Hero of Ukraine title, at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
"I would call this decision by the Higher Administrative Court a disgrace. To be honest, I was hoping that the district administrative court ruling will be overturned," Shukhevych said in an interview with the Gazeta Po-Ukrainski newspaper after the higher court announced its decision.
"I will calm down and go to the European Court. But it will be looking not at the decision itself, but whether the rights of the people in the legal process, both at the lower and higher courts, were violated," Shukhevych said.
This decision by the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine is not of much significance to me, the son of the UPA leader also said. "One can rule 100 times whether Shukhevych and Bandera were heroes or scoundrels. Whatever the court finds, they are what they are and will remain so. But it is unfair that the court is taking away the award from the two Ukrainians, who received this award from the previous authorities. I think that the court was brought to disgrace by the current authorities that claim to be Ukrainian. They defend not Ukrainian interests, but some other ones," Shukhevych said.
On August 2, the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine rejected the appeals from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko and Shukhevych against the ruling by the Donetsk administrative court of appeals, which had ruled that the decree awarding the Hero of Ukraine to R. Shukhevych was illegal.
Yuschenko’s attorney Vyacheslav Martyniuk said he will appeal against this decision with the Ukrainian Supreme Court.
