Will Zelensky agree that his grandfather was “scum”?

Natalia Pipa and Volodymyr Zelensky at his grandfather’s grave. Collage: UOJ

MP Natalia Pipa has commented on the removal of the inscription “Their feats will live forever, their names are immortal” from the monument at Kyiv’s Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, which until 2015 was known as the Museum of the Great Patriotic War.

Pipa called those words “disgusting,” writing on Facebook that “their feats will not live forever.” She concluded by declaring that “scum are incapable of heroism” – in the original Ukrainian, “pokydky ne maiut podvyhiv.”

Of course, by now we are supposed to be used to the fact that the present era is one of smashing through every moral bottom in areas once considered untouchable. But Pipa’s post stands out even against that bleak backdrop.

Ukrainians were among the peoples who suffered most at the hands of the Nazis. The total death toll – military and civilian alike – ranges from 8 to 10 million. Nearly every Ukrainian family lost someone. And in nearly every family, someone fought. Altogether, 6 to 7 million Ukrainians fought against the Nazis in the Red Army.

These are the very same people Pipa is branding “scum,” “trash,” and “human refuse.” These are the people who gave their lives so that she could sit in parliament today. That is no exaggeration. Reichskommissar of Ukraine Erich Koch wrote of Ukrainians:

“We are the master race and must rule firmly and justly. I will squeeze everything out of this country to the last drop. We must understand that even the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times superior to the local population.”

Had the Nazis won, Natalia Pipa – if she had been fortunate enough to be born at all – would, at best, have ended up as a menial servant to the so-called master race. The idea of becoming a member of parliament would never even have crossed her mind.

Natalia Pipa is from Lviv. We were unable to find precise information about her ancestors, but it is possible that her grandfathers did not fight in the Red Army, but in very different formations – the SS Galicia Division, Nachtigall, Roland, and the like. If that is indeed the case, it is hardly surprising that she now insults the heroes of the Second World War. But does she have the right to do so publicly and with such brazen defiance?

How, for example, will Volodymyr Zelensky react to Pipa’s words, given that his grandfather fought through the entire war all the way to Berlin? Does he agree that Semyon Zelensky – a mortar platoon commander and war hero – was “scum”? And perhaps former presidents are also willing to describe their own fathers and grandfathers who fought in the war that way?

And how exactly do Pipa’s remarks square with the authorities’ constant rhetoric about the need for Ukrainian unity? Let us think about it plainly: does this brazen, demonstrative insult to the memory of the ancestors of millions of Ukrainians foster unity – or division? And do the MP’s words amount to incitement of hatred under Article 161 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code?

There is yet another dimension to this story. Natalia Pipa is one of the authors of a bill aimed at banning the UOC. She speaks about the Church in exactly the same tone she now uses for the fallen heroes of the war. Beneath Pipa’s post about “scum,” she was supported by Solomiia Bobrovska – another fierce hater of the UOC in the Verkhovna Rada. And this is no exception: all those who persecute the Church traffic in hatred, malice, and division.

Apparently, that is just a coincidence.

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