The decision to give the SS Galicia soldiers the privileges of the Great Patriotic War veterans is impossible to call otherwise than a blasphemy and disregard of not only the entire national legislation, but also the international law. I am not going to talk about the moral side to this matter because everything here is completely clear to anybody who is capable of differentiating between good and evil. It would be enough to consider this issue from the purely legal viewpoint.

The Nuremberg tribunal acknowledged the SS a criminal organization that committed a large number of crimes against the humanity. The Nuremberg tribunal decisions are part and parcel of the modern international legal system relations, inobservance of which makes the transgressor an outcast in the civilized world, and this is very likely to have inevitable bad consequences. So, giving privileges to former SS soldiers, the Ivano-Frankivsk administration de-facto supports the goals those soldiers fought for.

Besides that, Ukraine’s laws provide for responsibility for the propaganda of national and racial oneness. The SS organization, whose members swore an oath of loyalty to Adolph Hitler, was based upon national and racial oneness.

In this situation we cannot pretend that nothing has happened and treat this decision just as an insufficiently considered step of the local authorities. They have not only vandalized the memory of those who died from the Nazis, hurt the feelings of the war veterans, who fought against fascism, and of all judicious people, but also struck a hard blow on Ukraine’s reputation as a lawful state.

I am convinced that our law enforcement agencies should react and estimate this decision from the viewpoint of the law.

For a long time I have been unsuccessfully voicing my concern over the activity of certain extremist organizations in the country and almost unhampered propaganda of the misanthropic ideas of Russophobia and anti-Semitism. The bill that I submitted to the Verkhovna Rada to struggle against fascism is still unconsidered by the parliamentary committees controlled by the nationalistic forces.