According to a report by Reuters, on Monday, Russian drones attacked a university and a museum linked to two prominent Ukrainian national identity defenders, leaving locals determined to repair the damage.
The first drone caused significant damage to the National Agrarian University, located outside Lviv in western Ukraine. This is where Stepan Bandera, considered a hero in Ukraine but a villain according to the Kremlin, studied. The attack occurred on what would have been Bandera’s 115th birthday.
The second drone targeted a museum dedicated to Roman Shukhevych, another key figure in nationalist resistance to Soviet rule. Both men were associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought against Soviet forces in World War Two.
Sofia Zdorovyk, an 82-year-old local, expressed her dismay at the attack, saying, “This is the building in which Stepan Bandera attended classes. There’s a memorial plaque dedicated to Bandera, and the statue too. Everything that’s been going on in our country, for so many years, do they (Russia) feel better because of it? Don’t they have enough land? Natural resources? What is it that they need?”
Mayor Andriy Sadovyi described the strike on the museum as a symbolic act and pledged to restore the damaged building after their victory.
Bandera, a key figure in a group associated with the UPA, led a resistance that grew to 100,000 by 1944 and continued fighting against Soviet rule until the mid-1950s. Shukhevych was the UPA’s supreme commander.
Moscow has invoked Bandera’s name to support its claims that it invaded Ukraine in February 2022 to “denazify” the country. They point to the fact that some nationalists initially collaborated with German forces in their fight against the Russians – although they later fought the Nazis as well.
Vasyl Lapushniak, President of the Lviv National Agrarian University, stated, “Just hearing the name Bandera scares them (the Russians). It causes rage and hatred. They did not scare us with this. It only united us once more and showed our strength.”
Both Bandera and Shukhevych were posthumously awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine.” Soldiers from the UPA’s ranks were also declared “veterans” alongside Soviet Red Army soldiers.
However, the nationalist army’s activity has been controversial due to allegations that it carried out massacres of tens of thousands of ethnic Poles in western Ukraine’s Volyn region, an area under Polish rule between the two world wars. Efforts have been made by Poland and Ukraine to honor those deaths and foster reconciliation between the two countries.
(Reporting by Andriy Perun, writing by Ron Popeski, editing by Andrew Heavens)
