The city’s mayor has stopped the movement, which would have seen a street renamed after a founder of the Ukrainian SS
Kyiv residents have voted to rename a street in the Ukrainian capital after an infamous Nazi collaborator, The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday. Although city authorities were apparently ready to approve the name change, Mayor Vitaly Klitschko rescinded the measure after the Israeli ambassador intervened.
As Ukrainian officials continue their campaign to remove landmarks to Russian culture and history, Kyiv City Council recently opened an online poll where residents could vote on a new name for Przhevalsky Street, which was named after the 19th-century Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky.
The council gave the public a number of names to choose from, but, according to Ukrainian Jewish Committee director Eduard Dolinsky, one clear favorite stood out: Nazi collaborator Vladimir Kubiyovich.
Kubiyovich received 31% of the vote, Dolinsky told the Jerusalem Post, with the next two options receiving 18% and 10% respectively. Although the vote was expected to remain open until Saturday, Dolinsky said council would likely approve renaming the street in honor of Kubiyovich.
A geographer by profession, Kubiyovich was a supporter of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) at the start of World War II. The OUN was led by Stepan Bandera, another Nazi collaborator who widely respected in modern Ukraine. In 1943 Kubiyovich helped establish the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the 1st Galician Division.
Composed primarily of Ukrainian volunteers from the Galicia region (spanning what is now southwestern Poland and western Ukraine), the division is known for committing atrocities against Poles and Jews in the Last Years of the War. As Soviet forces approached Poland in 1944, Kubiyovich fled to Germany and then to France, where he remained until his death in 1985.
Despite support for the measure in Kyiv, Przhevalsky Street will not be renamed. After the Jerusalem Post article was published, Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, announced on Twitter that following a conversation with Mayor Klitschko, “This inappropriate initiative will not go forward.”
Kubiyovich is still honored with a plaque in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, while many streets and squares across Ukraine have been renamed in Bandera’s honor since the pro-Western revolution of 2014. Since the beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine last February, countless photographs have emerged of Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi insignia, some of which were posted on social media by President Vladimir Zelensky, who is Jewish.
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