The Supreme Court of Ukraine upheld the earlier decision of the Court of Appeal not to consider the symbols of the SS division “Galicia” as Nazi symbols.
This was announced on Monday by lawyer Vyacheslav Yakubenko, who defends the interests of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. And he wrote on Facebook: “The Supreme Court put an end to a long legal epic that began five years ago … upholding the decision of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal dated September 23, 2020, which confirmed the right of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory to attribute the symbols of the Galicia group to the unacceptable. They belong to the symbols of the Nazis, that is, they are not prohibited in Ukraine.”
On May 27, 2020, the Kyiv Administrative Court ruled that the conclusion of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance that the symbols of the 14th SS Division “Galicia” are not symbols of the Nazi totalitarian regime is illegal, and their distribution or public use in Ukraine is prohibited.
But on September 23 of the same year, the Sixth Court of Appeal of Kyiv overturned the decision of the court of first instance.
During the Great Patriotic War, the fighters of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (banned in Russia), in cooperation with the intelligence of Nazi Germany, fought against the Soviet Union. In 1943, the Nazis formed the SS division “Galicia” from Ukrainian nationalists, whose members were involved in repressions and mass pogroms.
Source: “TASS”