Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) has said that it will be wise to refrain from awarding Hero of Ukraine titles.
"Ukraine should abandon these titles altogether," he said during a Web conference at the LigaBusinessInform agency in Kyiv on Wednesday.
Kravchuk said that Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko had degraded the status, strength and role of this award after conferring hero titles to too many people.
Commenting on Yuschenko’s decision to award the Hero of Ukraine title to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), he said that such a rank could have been awarded to him if people regarded this step without any hostility.
"It’s up to the people to decide whether Stepan Bandera deserves the hero title or not. But the president shouldn’t escalate through his action the confrontation between the older and younger generations, and between the country’s east and west. That we don’t know the true history of Bandera’s activity is a fact. But the president should always act wisely," Kravchuk said.
