Stepan Bandera monument in Lviv

The Stepan Bandera monument in Lviv, which stands in front of the Stele of Ukraine Monument, is a statue dedicated to Stepan Bandera, a controversial twentieth century Ukrainian symbol of Nationalism, in the city of Lviv, one of the main cities of Western Ukraine.

The figure stands in front of the Stele of Ukrainian Statehood. The monument was unveiled in 2007. for the eve of the holiday of the Intercession of the Theotokos. The full monunment was finished in 2011.

Background
The Statue in Lviv was part of increased Ukrainian Nationalism in Western Ukraine that led to recognition of Stepan Bandera as a National hero.

Bandera was a Ukrainian nationalist leader born in 1909, imprisoned in Poland in his twenties for terrorism, freed by the Nazis in 1939 following the invasion of Poland, and arrested again by the Gestapo in 1941, spending most of the rest of the war in a concentration camp. After the war, he settled in exile in West Germany, where he was assassinated in 1959 by KGB agents.

Stepan Bandera has also been cast as a Nazi collaborator. However, many Ukrainians hail him as a national hero or as a martyred liberation fighter.

The history of Stepan Bandera is hard to separate from fact or fiction. It was illegal to discuss or research Bandera and the OUN-B in the Russia, Poland, and Ukraine until the fall of Soviet Union. A constant tension defining Bandera as a hero and villain has existed since 1944 but has increased with lead up to war in Ukraine.

The monument
The monument is a larger than life statue of Stepan Bandera standing 7 meters tall. Behind it is the Stele of Ukrainian Statehood - a 30 meter tall triumphal arch with 4 columns, each column symbolizing a different period of the Ukrainian statehood. The first one - Kievan Rus', the second - the Cossack Hetmanate, the third - the Ukrainian People's Republic, and the fourth - the modern, independent Ukraine.

Planning for the project began in 1993. Funding of the statue was provided by Lviv Oblast and veterans of the UPA. Due to a shortage of funds only the statue was revealed for the 65th Anniversary.

A design competition was held in 2002 and sculptor Mykola Posikira and architect Mykhailo Fedyk won from a total of seven entries. Construction began in 2003.

Controversy
Stepan Bandera is seen as a hero to some and a Nazi collaborator to others. Much of this controversy emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union and increased Ukrainian Nationalism as part of Independence and growing tension before the Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Stepan Bandera as National symbol became prominent in Western Ukraine while Russian media drew connections to historical ties the UPA and OUN-B had with Nazi Germany.

Critics of Bandera as a national symbol point to the role of the UPA in the massacre of 100,000 Polish people Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during World War Two. Stepan Bandera the faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B). On 30 June 1941, shortly after Lviv came under the control of Nazi Germany in the early stages of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, the OUN-B declared an independent Ukrainian state in the city. OUN members subsequently took part in the Lviv pogroms. Russian media uses this historical connection to Ukrainian-led genocide to cast Ukrainian nationalists as nazis. The Simon Wiesenthal Center considers Bandera to be a Nazi Collaborator and harshly criticized the decision by Ukrainian Parliament to designate the birthday of Nazi Collaborator Bandera as a national holiday. Officials in Israel regard Bandera as a Nazi collaborator and in Poland, Bandera is also considered a collaborator to the Nazi attrocities during WWii, responsible for the pogroms carried out by OUN-B and UPA in polish teritorries, which are now parts of Western Ukraine. The need for denazification was given as a Russian pretense for the escalation and full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, following the events of the 2014 Maidan riots and toppling of the democratically elected president of Ukraine and subsequent civil war in the Donbas region. Russian concerns are that honouring Bandera through monuments and national holidays is evidence of high-level infiltration by far-right extremist into the government, and that allowing this to spread will lead to ethnic cleansing of the ethnic Russian population in the East of the Dnieper river, which is based on the events following the Maidan riots of 2014 and subsequent death of more than 11 000 people during the new government crackdown on the Donbas region. Far-right paramilitary and military formations have often displayed symbols either honoring Bandera or the OUN, along with other Nazi symbols such as the Wolfsangel insignia.