Ukraine must either condemn all forms of cooperation with all the occupiers (communist Moscow, Nazi Berlin and its allies), or recognize the heroes of all fighters for the freedom of Ukraine. No matter how someone interprets it.
Volunteers of the Galicia Division went to fight not for Germany, but for the future of their families, free from communist terror. In June 1941 alone, the Red Executioners killed 20,000 Lviv residents. So what should have been the reaction of Galicians to the threat of the return of Moscow’s red power?
The Galicia Division at the Nuremberg Tribunal was not found guilty of crimes of the National Socialist regime. The unit fought exclusively against the regular Red Army and its sabotage groups operating under the guise of “partisans.”
After 1945, the United States, Canada, and Britain refused to extradite veterans of the division at Stalin’s request because the Communists could not provide any evidence of their crimes against civilians.
The decision of the Kyiv District Administrative Court is an outright indulgence of the Kremlin and its adherents in Ukraine. For us, the soldiers of the Galicia Division were and will remain heroes who fought for a free Ukraine with Russia. They died for a free Ukraine! This is our story, which we are not going to give up.
Instead of manipulating the Galicia division, Vatutin’s monument should be demolished, which was an open enemy of the idea of Ukrainian statehood.
All in fairness, a monument to Gerd von Rundstedt, German field marshal, the commander of Army Group South, who liberated Kyiv from the Red Occupation in 1941, can be placed next to Vatutin’s monument. The law must work in both directions! If there is a monument to the “liberator” Vatutin in Kyiv, why not put a monument to the “liberator” von Rundstedt next to it?