General Staff replies why it sent an honor guard to SS soldier’s "funeral"

The "funeral service" for the SS man in the main cathedral of the OCU. Photo: Censor.NO

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not know it was sending a guard of honor to the "funeral service" of a former soldier of the SS "Galizien" division. This is stated in the response of the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Sergei Korniychuk, received at the request of MP Maxim Buzhansky.

The document was published by the parliamentarian on his tg-channel on Friday, July 9.

It indicates that the servicemen of the Separate Presidential Regiment named after Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky were involved in the events on the basis of a letter from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM), which presented Orest Vaskula "as a person who made significant achievements on the way to gaining the independence of Ukraine."

The General Staff stressed that in the appeal they received from the deputy head of the Institute of National Remembrance, "there was no information that Orest Vaskula had to do with the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS "Galizien".

“As I expected, the General Staff received a request from the Institute of National Memory, in which not a word was said about the SS past of the deceased, and he himself was represented as a fighter for independence. The letter was signed by a certain Tylishchak, Drobovich's deputy head (Anton Drobovich is the head of the UINM – Ed.). Okay, I'll send Drobovich another request about the deliberate concealment of the SS past of the deceased by the deputy director of the Institute of National Memory. They simply framed up the military, the devils from the UINM,” wrote Maksim Buzhansky.

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that on June 13, 2021, a solemn public funeral of a fighter of the Nazi SS "Galizien" division, Orest Vaskula, with the participation of servicemen from the Presidential Regiment was held in the St. Michael Monastery of the OCU. MP Maxim Buzhansky demanded to explain why an honor guard was allocated for the funeral of the SS fighter.

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