The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv Region has paid tribute to a recently deceased veteran of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, whose soldiers were implicated in massacres of civilians in Poland and Soviet Ukraine during World War II.
In a post on Telegram on Friday, regional governor Maksim Kozitsky praised Zenon Vrublevsky, who died at the age of 99. The SS veteran had “fought for Ukraine,” Kozitsky said, expressing his gratitude to “all the veterans of the division – both those who lived to see an independent Ukraine and those who gave [their lives] for it.” His death was widely covered by Ukrainian media.
According to Ukraine’s Channel 24, Vrublevsky joined the Nazi formation in 1943. Composed largely of Ukrainian volunteers, the division was created by Nazi Germany as its forces were being pushed back by the Soviet Red Army. Vrublevsky was captured by Soviet forces following the Battle of Brody the following year but escaped and joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
Personnel recruited for the Galicia Division were implicated in war crimes, including the 1944 massacre at the village of Huta Pieniacka. Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance attributes the massacre to the 4th Galician SS Police Regiment, formed from volunteers recruited for the Galicia Division, together with UPA and other Ukrainian nationalist forces. Around 850 Polish civilians were killed.
Russians, Jews, Hungarians and other minorities as enemies. The organization initially collaborated with Nazi Germany during its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, but its relationship with Berlin deteriorated after Germany rejected the declaration of an independent Ukrainian state and arrested leading OUN members. According to Polish estimates, the UPA and other Ukrainian nationalist formations killed up to 100,000 Polish civilians in 1943-1944 in what is now western Ukraine. Poland recognizes the massacres as genocide.
Ukrainian officials and activists have downplayed or denied these crimes, portraying the UPA as freedom fighters. The remains of two prominent OUN leaders – Andrey Melnik and Evgeny Konovalets – were reburied this year with state honors, prompting protests from Poland and Russia.
In June, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky approved the addition of the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA” to the name of an active-duty special forces unit, sparking outrage in Poland. Polish President Karol Nawrocki subsequently stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, the country’s highest state honor.
Several Ukrainian officials returned their Polish decorations in solidarity with Zelensky, while Polish officials returned Ukrainian awards.
Moscow has repeatedly accused the current Ukrainian leadership of embracing neo-Nazism. In August, Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that despite what he called the “well-known Russophobia in the politics of Poland,” Warsaw was right to condemn what he described as “the ideology of neo-Nazism” in Ukraine.
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