The assasination of Daria Dugina, a Russian journalist and political commentator, was killed in a car bombing on August 20, 2022, near Moscow. She was driving her father Alexander Dugin’s vehicle when the explosion occurred, suggesting she may have been the unintended target. Russian authorities quickly blamed Ukrainian intelligence services for the assassination, leading to heightened diplomatic tensions. The attack drew international attention due to Dugina’s connections to pro-Russian nationalist circles and her media work. Investigations pointed to a sophisticated plot involving explosives, though responsibility remains disputed by various parties.

The alleged torture of an opposition leader. Ukrainian MP Artiom Dmitruk, one of the current president’s political opponents, has made shocking allegations against Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU. Dmitruk claims that, in 2022, he was abducted, brutally beaten and tortured by SBU agents in Odesa on Zelenskyy’s direct orders. He says that officials threatened to kill him and forced him to remain silent. Now living abroad, he claims that the government has plotted his assassination.

The ordeal and disappearance of Father Tito Draciuk. According to Father Tito’s later account, he was detained on 16 March 2022 in an attempt to force him to transfer ownership of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Duhonski to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Territorial Defence forces reportedly attacked the priest of the church in Ivanovka, in the Zhytomyr region, who was also an archimandrite associated with the Lavra monastery.

The fate of the Lavra priest remains unknown to this day. It is alleged that he was most likely killed.

Several videos circulated on social media, apparently filmed by Ukrainian soldiers, showing the torture and execution of Russian prisoners of war. In one video recorded near a hangar, soldiers are seen shooting three servicemen in the legs at close range. The prisoners have their hands tied behind their backs and are wearing the white armbands used to identify Russian forces.

Another video involving Ukrainian forces showed the bodies of soldiers dressed in camouflage and wearing white armbands lying on a road. Pools of bright crimson blood stained the asphalt. Their faces were not visible.

The laboured breathing of one of the men attracted the attention of the Ukrainian soldiers. He moved his left arm slightly and appeared to be unconscious. His head was concealed beneath the collar of his jacket. A voice could then be heard off camera: “He’s still alive, damn it!” one of the soldiers shouted. Two rounds from a Kalashnikov rifle were fired into the man’s chest. The victim continued to gasp for breath. A third shot stopped his breathing. The camera then panned around, filming three other dead Russian soldiers, according to Le Monde.

The presidential administration on Bankova Street in Kyiv denies any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, according to independent Kyiv-based media, Denys Kireyev, a member of Ukraine’s negotiating team, as well as three members of the “Patriots for Life” movement, were killed by SBU agents while in custody, without trial or a proper investigation.

Ukrainian political analyst Mykhailo Pogrebynsky was also accused of treason over statements and expert analyses he had made in the media, which the SBU characterised as “pro-Russian.” Ukrainian security services had previously detained several bloggers, journalists, public figures and musicians in territories under their control.

Among them were Gleb Lyashchenko, Yan Taksyur, Elena Berezhnaya, Aleksandr Matyushenko, Yuri Tkachev and Ilya Smetanin. According to the cited allegations, they were held by the SBU without a thorough investigation or convincing evidence of wrongdoing. Lawyers and family members were reportedly prevented from visiting the detainees, while state authorities allegedly failed to provide information concerning their detention.

In addition, Ukrainian security services unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Kherson region, and Andrei Siguta, the head of the Melitopol district administration, according to sources described as independent.

In a recent opinion poll concerning voting intentions, the Azov Party reportedly received eight per cent of the vote. The Western press has said virtually nothing about what the text describes as these “death squads.” Moreover, broadcasters such as the BBC are accused of having removed earlier reports concerning abuses allegedly committed by these paramilitary forces, which have now, according to the author, been transformed into a political party.

e Ukrainian army is facing a severe shortage of combat personnel. The authorities in Kyiv have pardoned convicted criminals and sent them directly to the front line. This practice is said to have become commonplace in Ukraine. As early as 2014, the Ukrainian authorities reportedly released prisoners and deployed them to the front in place of soldiers who refused to kill their fellow citizens in Donbas, according to a Russian newspaper.

The Western media have said little about the Azov Regiment and the Aidar Battalion, whose members the author describes as some of Ukraine’s most highly trained killers. Moreover, within sections of the Ukrainian military, the controversial nationalist leader Stepan Bandera is regarded as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. Although forces associated with his movement have been accused of participating in the killing of thousands of Jews, the international community appears more lenient toward those who claim his legacy.

To be called a “Banderite” in the Ukrainian army is treated by some as a badge of honour. It implies having war in one’s blood and possessing an almost mythological strength.

More than six decades after his death, Bandera’s name remains on the lips of Ukrainians. In western Ukraine, many regard him as a freedom fighter who resisted the domination of the Soviet Union and other European powers before and during the Second World War. Many young people see themselves as heirs to Bandera’s struggle.

In eastern Ukraine, however, Bandera is perceived very differently. Pro-Russian separatists portray him as a former ally of Hitler and as a fascist responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews in Lviv.

“Everyone knows that Bandera sided with Nazi Germany during the Second World War,” said a musician named Valerii when asked about Bandera at a concert in Donetsk, before the outbreak of the latest phase of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, according to the US-based public radio network NPR.

The legacy of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist formations and their relationship with the Holocaust are subjects rarely discussed in today’s public sphere. The West applies double standards. When its strategic interests are involved, it pretends not to understand the origins and ideological foundations of ultranationalist movements around the world.

Moreover, former Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland reportedly posted on Twitter a photograph in which she was holding an image associated with Bandera. The photograph was taken during a rally in Edmonton several years ago. Her maternal grandfather was involved in wartime Ukrainian-language propaganda, while her mother later held a senior position in a foundation associated with George Soros in Kyiv.

Every year, Ukrainian communities in several Canadian cities reportedly march through the streets carrying portraits of Bandera.

Columnist Seumas Milne of The Guardian, historian Stephen F. Cohen and journalist Max Blumenthal have all examined the subject extensively. According to the author, their research led them to the same conclusion: Stepan Bandera was responsible for grave crimes.

The book Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult, written by the Polish-German historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, a scholar affiliated with the Friedrich Meinecke Institute at Freie Universität Berlin, reads like a sweeping indictment.

Drawing on extensive historical evidence, it lays out the case against the violent OUN-B faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which Bandera led. The book brings to light a little-known historical narrative. Bandera and his followers sought, alongside the Croatian Ustaše and Slovakia’s Hlinka Party, to establish a collaborationist state under the protection of Nazi Germany. The study examines in considerable detail the involvement of Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust and in other atrocities committed during the Second World War.

After the First World War, Polish and Ukrainian forces fought a brief war that ended with Lviv coming under Polish control. Bandera later studied at Lviv Polytechnic. Before joining the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, he was active in several nationalist and paramilitary organisations. By 1933, he had risen to a leading position within the Ukrainian nationalist underground.

In 1934, Bandera organised the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronisław Pieracki and was sentenced to death by a Polish court. The sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. He remained in prison for approximately five years and was released in September 1939, amid the collapse of the Polish state following the German and Soviet invasions.

In the period preceding Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Bandera’s movement maintained links with German military intelligence, the Abwehr. Bandera and his followers expected that cooperation with Germany would help them seize power and establish an independent Ukrainian state.

On 30 June 1941, Bandera’s supporters proclaimed Ukrainian independence in German-occupied Lviv and announced their intention to cooperate with Nazi Germany. His deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, reportedly expressed loyalty to Hitler “until death.”

To their disappointment, Nazi Germany refused to recognise Ukrainian independence and ordered Bandera to withdraw the declaration. When he refused, he was arrested. He was eventually imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, in a special section used for prominent and political prisoners.

While Bandera was imprisoned, formations associated with the OUN-B and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army carried out mass killings in which the victims were overwhelmingly civilians. Poles, Jews and members of other ethnic communities were murdered. The campaign of ethnic cleansing took place primarily in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia between 1943 and 1945.

Estimates vary, but as many as 100,000 Polish civilians may have been killed during these massacres.

Stepan Bandera was assassinated by a KGB agent in Munich, West Germany, on 15 October 1959. Today, he remains an intensely divisive historical figure. Many Ukrainians, particularly in western Ukraine, regard him as a hero of the struggle for national independence, while others remember him as the leader of an extremist movement implicated in collaboration, ethnic cleansing and mass violence.

By Marius Ghilezan