The Ukrainian authorities have proceeded with the official repatriation and honoring of Andriy Melnyk, leader of the notorious Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-M), once again exposing the increasingly open rehabilitation of fascist and collaborationist forces within the country’s official historical narrative.
Melnyk was one of the principal leaders of the OUN, an ultra-nationalist and fiercely anti-communist organization that collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. Despite repeated attempts by Ukrainian nationalist circles to sanitize this history, the political character of the OUN remains inseparable from fascist ideology, ethnic chauvinism and collaboration with the Nazi occupation.
The decision to ceremonially return Melnyk’s remains to Ukraine and publicly honor him is not accidental. It reflects a broader state policy that has steadily elevated OUN figures into official “national heroes,” while anti-fascist and communist traditions are systematically erased or criminalized. Streets, monuments and commemorations dedicated to OUN leaders have multiplied in recent years under the banner of “decommunization.”
The reactionary Zelensky government continues this dangerous historical revisionism by presenting figures like Melnyk as symbols of “national liberation,” ignoring or deliberately obscuring the reactionary and fascistic nature of the movement they led.
The repatriation also reveals the profound hypocrisy of Western governments and institutions that continue to present Ukraine as a bastion of “democratic values” while remaining silent about the glorification of organizations historically tied to fascism and Nazi collaboration.
The honoring of Andriy Melnyk is not merely a symbolic act about the past. It is another clear indication of the ideological direction being cultivated inside the Ukrainian state: militant nationalism, institutionalized anti-communism and the normalization of far-right historical revisionism.
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“Repatriates”, it would be impressive if they had rehabilitated a corpse
