You're reading: French rightist Le Pen visits on Heroes’ Day

Radical right French leader makes bizarre request on Ukrainian soil for nationalists of the world to unite

LVIV – French ultra-nationalist leader JeanMarie Le Pen attended a Ukrainian radical rightist party rally here on on May 21, as thousands of Ukrainian nationalists paraded the city’s streets.

Le Pen came to Ukraine at the invitation of the Lviv-based Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine (SNPU). An honored quest at the party’s sixth congress in Lviv, Le Pen hailed the SNPU and called for a closer cooperation between nationalists in Ukraine and France.

“Nationalists of all the world unite,” said Le Pen, crowning a fiery speech at the congress. “Fight and you will win.”

Le Pen urged the SNPU to join the European organization of far-right movements, adding that nationalists from the republics of former Yugoslavia, Romania, Slovakia and Italy have already done so. The SNPU currently has an observer status in the organization.

Le Pen’s National Front party, founded in 1972, has long blamed France’s immigrants for the country’s social and economic woes. The party has been widely accused of racism and xenophobia.

Le Pen’s visit to Lviv was timed to the city’s commemoration of the Heroes’ Day, a tribute to prominent Ukrainian activists who fought for the country’s independence in the Soviet times.

The holiday was introduced recently by local authorities, but has yet to achieve a nationwide status.

Thousands of schoolchildren from Lviv and neighboring towns and villages marched through the city’s main thoroughfare, carrying red-and-black nationalist banners and portraits of Stepan Bandera, one of the most famous Ukrainian nationalists, who was killed in Germany in the 1950’s by an alleged KGB agent.

Young people were joined by elderly veterans of the so-called Ukrainian Insurrection Army, which fought against both Nazi and Soviet troops in World War II.

The meeting then blessed a large metal trident, the symbol of Ukraine’s statehood, which will soon be transported to Kyiv to replace the old Soviet emblem on building of the country’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.