Stepan Bandera

After the war, Bandera remained head of an OUN faction in exile, clashed with other nationalists over his leadership style and, from 1949, cooperated with British intelligence service MI6, which used his networks to send agents into the Soviet Union.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

In autumn 1944, as the Reich's military position collapsed, Bandera was released from Sachsenhausen amid renewed German attempts to mobilise Ukrainian forces against the USSR and develop sabotage and intelligence operations.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Political responsibility

German authorities arrested Bandera after he refused to revoke the proclamation of a Ukrainian state. He was detained in Berlin and subsequently at Sachsenhausen concentration camp until September 1944.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

The OUN-B and UPA conducted a campaign of massacres and expulsions against Poles in Volhynia and then Eastern Galicia. The IPN emphasises that Bandera was imprisoned in Germany and that the extent of his contact with the underground leadership remains unknown.

State of the evidence

Documented

Following the OUN split, Bandera led the OUN-B. The IPN notes that principles, symbols and rituals resembling fascism were adopted at the 1941 Kraków congress, while the movement prepared an authoritarian and violent “national revolution”.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

In preparation for the German–Soviet war, the OUN-B maintained links with German military circles, participated in training Ukrainian units and organised groups intended to follow the German advance into Soviet territory.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

In Lviv, OUN-B leaders proclaimed the restoration of a Ukrainian state “under the leadership of Stepan Bandera”. The text announced cooperation with Germany in the war against Moscow, and Bandera appointed Yaroslav Stetsko to head the government.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Activists and structures linked to the OUN-B participated in incitement and anti-Jewish violence in western Ukraine at the time of the German invasion. Bandera's movement therefore forms an important organisational context for the 1941 pogroms.