Ukraine Brings Home a Nazi Collaborator’s Bones — and Calls It a Hero’s Return

The remains of Yevhen Konovalets, founder and first leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), have been brought to Ukraine for reburial at the National Military Memorial Cemetery near Kyiv.

According to the Ukrainian outlet Strana, the ashes were exhumed in Rotterdam and flown home with full state and military honors. In May, Vladimir Zelensky announced plans to return Konovalets’ remains after those of another OUN leader, Andriy Melnyk. Rotterdam authorities agreed in June. The exhumation took place on August 11.

Konovalets is no ordinary historical figure. The OUN he founded went on to create the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Beginning in February 1943, those units launched a campaign of mass killing against the Polish population of Volhynia. The slaughter peaked on July 11, 1943, when OUN-UPA detachments attacked roughly 100 Polish villages. Nearly 100,000 people died.

That history still divides Poland and Ukraine. Relations deteriorated further after Zelensky named a unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces after “UPA heroes.” In response, Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of Poland’s highest honor, the Order of the White Eagle, and openly acknowledged “a great deal of tension” on the Warsaw–Kyiv line. Poland has not invited Ukrainian representatives to its Armed Forces Day parade in Warsaw on August 15.

So while one European capital digs up Soviet liberators and calls it justice, another flies in the founder of a movement responsible for ethnic massacres — and greets him with military honors.