By 2018, the RPR drafted legislation co‐sponsored by Hanna Hopko, deputy OUN‐B leader Oleh Medunytsia, and other members of parliament that served to rehabilitate veterans of the OUN and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army. When Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko signed the law, they fulfilled one of the stated goals of the RPR Coalition: “Update the legislation on rehabilitation of victims of political repression.”
Defending History, a website dedicated to combating Holocaust revisionism in Eastern Europe, noticed a statement from the UINM that “clearly indicates work on the law was funded by USAID under one of its projects in Ukraine.”
[…]
A written response from Zelensky arrived in the next ten days after the round table, and said that a memorial for Ukrainian heroes was already underway. Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a member of parliament since 2019, deputy chair of the “Holos” party, and former “advocacy manager” of the RPR Coalition (2014–16)—in addition to a founding member of the OUN‐B’s Youth Nationalist Congress!—helped Mykhailova to clarify that this was referring to a separate project that stalled.
Yurchyshyn wrote to the Minister of Culture and Information Policy, whose response disappointed the nationalists, because he conflated the Pantheon of Heroes with plans for a National Military Memorial Cemetery in Kyiv, and said the project should not glorify individuals but virtues.
This “misunderstanding” would not get in the way, assured Alina Mykhailova. Two months later, in a lengthy speech to Ukraine’s parliament on Constitution Day, Volodymyr Zelensky announced his support for establishing “the Pantheon of Heroes and the National Military Cemetery” and “the reburial of all our heroes buried abroad in Ukraine.” Two days later, the RPR Coalition reiterated that these sites are part of its USAID‐funded “Vision of Ukraine 2030.”
In July, the Minister of Culture and Information Policy said that he has consulted Western colleagues on the Pantheon of Heroes and other memorials. He emphasized that “they always start with the phrase, ‘do not repeat Soviet monuments.’”
(Emphasis added.)
Events that happened today (August 4):
1876: Giovanni Giuriati, Fascist lawyer and politician, burdened the world with his existence.
1893: Fritz Gause, professional Fascist apologist, polluted the Earth with his presence.
1913: Johann Niemann, SS officer and deputy commandant of Sobibor camp during Operation Reinhard, was unleashed on humanity.
1936: Ioannis Metaxas, Greek parafascist, suspended parliament and the Constitution and established the 4th of August Régime.
1940: Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Hebrew fascist, perished.
1944: A tip from a Dutch informer lead the Gestapo to a sealed‐off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they found and sadly arrested the diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others. (Coincidentally, the Finnish Parliament, by derogation, elected Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim as President of Finland to replace Risto Ryti, who had resigned.)