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CAMPAIGNERS raised the alarm yesterday over tomorrow’s planned march by Ukrainian veterans on the Cenotaph, warning that organisers plan to commemorate fascist Waffen SS volunteers.
The march, organised by the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, London Euromaidan and the Congress of Ukrainian Youth, pledges to pay tribute to soldiers who served in “all wars.”
But anti-fascist activists said this phrasing includes those responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and Poles in Ukraine during the second world war as well as the neonazis who helped topple a democratically elected government in Kiev earlier this year.
Similar marches in Ukraine have seen participants openly parade swastikas and pictures of enthusiastic nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.
A demonstration organiser told the Star the main organiser of the commemoration was the “London branch” of the Euromaidan protest group that forced February’s coup.
Alex Gordon, an activist with rail union RMT, which is affiliated to the Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine campaign, said: “The overwhelming majority of people in London and Britain as a whole will be appalled to hear that SS veterans and their admirers are allowed to march at the Cenotaph.
“The Ukrainian division SS Galicia murdered Jews, Poles, Russians and anyone who got in the way of their sick plans for a racially pure Ukraine.
“It is a sign of how far we have travelled that these people are pushing their way back into the mainstream today. It is an insult to millions who died fighting Hitler and Nazism.”
Supporters of the Solidarity campaign will hold a silent protest as the Ukrainian veterans march on the Cenotaph.
