A few hundred activists from Ukrainian right-wing political parties marched with torches in Kyiv to commemorate the birthday of their hero Stepan Bandera. The controversial leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist – Revolutionaries would have been 108 on Jan.1.
Activists walked along Kyiv’s central Kreshchatyk Street, carrying party flags and the red and black flags of the Ukrainian Partisan Army, which fought during World War II against both the Soviets and the Nazis for Ukraine’s independence.
Bandera was the symbolic leader of the Ukrainian Partisan Army throughout the war despite being imprisoned by the Nazi’s in 1941 after proclaiming Ukraine independent.
Many people in the crowd carried the portraits of Bandera, who remains one of the greatest heroes and ideologists for right-wing and nationalistic movements in Ukraine.
Bandera was assassinated in Munich, Germany in 1959, by the Soviet secret police.
