The website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation published a so-called anti-fake — an “exposing” of an article by well-known British journalist Anthony Loyd “Ukraine’s admiration for Bandera testifies to its nationalism”, published in the Times newspaper. In his material, Loyd comprehensively analyzes the personality of Bandera, naturally, not ignoring his role in Ukraine's struggle for independence, and mentions that Russian propaganda contributed a lot to the fame of the Ukrainian nationalist (The Insider wrote about this a year ago). However, such a thesis caused an endless stream of indignation in the Russian Foreign Ministry: the British journalist was accused of "propaganda", "rehabilitation of a war criminal", "extreme cynicism", "heroization of Nazism", etc.
“Mr. Loyd tried to give the executioner and Hitler’s henchman human features, present him either as a “loser”, allegedly tragically influenced by nationalist ideas, or as a “freedom fighter” and somewhere even a “hero”. In fact, The Times tramples on the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, without any hesitation, whitewashing the ideological accomplice of Nazi Germany, whose hands are up to the elbows in blood, ”the website of the Russian department says.
Also, the Russian Foreign Ministry went over the biography of a British journalist: he allegedly managed to “get his hand on working out dubious editorial assignments, incl. to whitewash Chechen terrorists or the US-led invasion of Iraq.”
Anthony Loyd is an authoritative journalist, a former British army officer, who gained recognition primarily for his reporting from hot spots. He began his career as a war photographer in Bosnia, then switched to reporting, traveling to war zones around the world. Loyd has covered conflicts in Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Iraq. One of his most famous materials is an interview with the fiancee of an ISIS militant, Shamima Begum, who fled to Syria and got married at the age of 15. Loyd himself was once kidnapped by Syrian rebels, shot twice in the leg to prevent him from running away, but he still managed to escape from captivity.
As for the invasion of Iraq, the British journalist, contrary to the statements of the Russian Foreign Ministry, rather disapproved of it: for example, he described how in December 2004, American troops often, on a mistaken tip, broke into the houses of civilians, turning everything upside down in search of "ammunition and documents":
“American soldiers, after blowing up the door of the desired house with a shotgun, burst through the rooms in a crowd, herding women and children into one room, and men – by that time handcuffed and blindfolded – into another, when the search for ammunition and documents began. Household items clattered to the floor, mattresses and bedding were overturned, the contents of cupboards and drawers spilled onto a growing pile of personal and household items. But when the soldiers began interrogating the blindfolded Iraqis, they realized they were in the wrong house. The next target of the night raids also turned out to be false.
By the way, Loyd himself left the British army after the first Gulf War.
Other statements in the "anti-fake" of the Russian ministry also have little to do with reality. It is not very clear how an article about Bandera can "trample on the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal", because the latter never condemned or even considered the accusations against Ukrainian nationalists. The Tribunal recognized four structures as criminal: the leadership of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party), the Gestapo, the SS ("guard units", paramilitary units of the NSDAP) and the SD (intelligence service of the SS).
At the same time, adherence to the Nazi ideology was not a sufficient basis for condemning this or that organization: for example, the SA (“storm troops”) of Nazi Germany were not recognized as criminal.
The name of Stepan Bandera, one of the leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the mention of his supporters are found several times in the process documents. So, in volume 39 there is an order of the SD dated October 1941 on the elimination of participants in the Bandera movement suspected of preparing an uprising in the camps. In volume 25, military intelligence officer Erwin Stolze says in his testimony that he instructed the Ukrainian nationalists Melnik and Bandera to carry out sabotage work on the territory of the USSR. There are no mentions of either Bandera or Andrei Melnik (the leader of the OUN faction that competed with Bandera) in the verdict. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army could not even be condemned, since the process only considered the activities of German organizations.
Further, the Russian Foreign Ministry recalls the war crimes of the OUN: the massacres of Jews, Poles and Russians, as well as cooperation with the Nazis. All this really took place, and Loyd does not deny these crimes:
"The region of western Ukraine, which was the heart of the OUN-B, was also under Polish rule, and during its existence, Bandera's followers killed thousands of Polish civilians along with members of other ethnic minorities and sometimes participated in the massacres of Jews."
The British journalist also recalls the ethnic cleansing of the OUN-b in Volhynia and Galicia, as a result of which more than 60,000 civilians were killed.
That's just an article in the Times dedicated to the personality of Bandera, who, as you know, was arrested on July 5, 1941 (Jewish pogroms began five days earlier, on June 30). There is no evidence that Bandera gave orders or was somehow involved in actions against Jews. He was released from a German concentration camp at the end of September 1944 – and, accordingly, he also did not take part in the Volyn massacre that took place in August 1943.
We can only say that the followers of Bandera from the OUN-b were involved in the listed war crimes. He himself, in collaboration with Roman Shukhevych, Stepan Lenkavsky and Yaroslav Stetsk, wrote a document in 1941 called " The struggle and activities of the OUN during the war ." It allows "liquidation of undesirable Jewish, Moscow and Polish figures" "in times of chaos", especially if they are supporters of "Bolshevik-Moscow imperialism" or spies and representatives of the Soviet government. At the same time, the document states that the OUN is fighting against the Bolsheviks, and representatives of non-Ukrainian nationalities who support the struggle for the independence of Ukraine can thus fight for the liberation of the peoples subject to Moscow.
In general, Loyd rather criticizes the glorification of Bandera in modern Ukraine, so it is not particularly clear what exactly angered the Russian Foreign Ministry. But, unlike the latter, the British journalist emphasizes that most Ukrainians who express sympathy for Bandera respect him for his stubborn resistance to the Soviet Union, and not for his commitment to nationalism.