WHO ARE THE BUTCHERS?
Opinion by Mikhail Kosarev, Press Attaché of the Embassy of Russia in South Africa
11 July 2025
The ethnic cleansing campaign in Volhynia (Nazi-occupied part of the Soviet Union) which began in Feb 1943, reached its gruesome peak on 11 July 1943. On that day alone, death squads of Ukrainian nationalists simultaneously attacked over 160 Polish settlements, murdering around 10,000 people.
No quarters were given to women, children, the elderly. People were killed in their homes, in churches, in the streets. They were shot, stabbed and burnt alive.
The unheard slaughter went down in history as the Volhynia Massacre – mass murder of the Poles as well as Jews, Russians, Ukrainians etc, by militants of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA*, the armed wing of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN*) during World War II. July 11, 1943 was later named “Volhynian Bloody Sunday.”
Total number of those killed during the Volhynia Massacre amounts, by various estimates, up to 130,000 people – mostly civilians.
There are several memorials to the victims of OUN-UPA in Poland, with one of them unveiled in 2024 in Domostawa, not far from the current Ukrainian border. It represents a 14-meter-tall bronze eagle with a cross-shaped void in its centre. In the gap, there’s a horrifying sculpture of a child impaled on a hayfork that resembles the trident (‘tryzub’) from Ukraine’s coat of arms.
An excerpt from the book “Crimes of Ukrainian nationalists against the Polish population in Volhynia. 1939-1945” by J.Turowski and E.Siemaszko (retranslated):
“July 11, 1943, Biskupice village, Vladimir-Volynsky district. Ukrainian nationalists committed mass murder, herding residents into a school building. It was at the same time that they brutally murdered the family of Vladimir Yaskula. The executioners burst into the house when everyone was asleep. They killed the parents with axes and laid their five children next to them; they were all covered with straw from mattresses and set on fire.”
And who were the butchers? Those currently glorified by Kiev regime as heroes. Statues of Stepan Bandera, who stood at the origins of the OUN, and Roman Shukhevich, UPA commander and architect of the Volhynia Massacre, can be found all across Ukraine. They stand proudly, not in shame, but in celebration.
Thinking of the Poles who perished by hands of Ukrainian nationalists only for being Poles, I can’t help drawing parallels with nowadays Ukraine. Isn’t being Russians what people are killed for by present-day Kiev Nazis?
Their tools changed – rockets, drones and machine guns, rather than axes, bludgeons and pitchforks – but their hatred remains the same. And just like their predecessors, the neo-Nazis show no mercy towards women, children and the elderly.
On July 27, 2014, another "Bloody Sunday" in Donetsk, Ukrainian army delivered devastating artillery strikes on Gorlovka, which resulted altogether in 27 fatalities. Among the victims were 23-year-old Kristina Zhuk and her 10-month-old daughter Kira. When the bombardment started, Kristina tried to shield the baby. Her body, still holding her dead child, was found torn apart by a shell in the city park. Media refused to share these horrible pictures.
Over eight years following the 2014 coup d'état, the blood-soaked neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine killed and tortured to death more than 8,000 civilians trying to defend their human dignity, their civil rights, and their native language, in the region of Donbass, against “Maidan values.” To legalise these murders, Kiev labeled these people “terrorists.”
Kiev makes no attempt to hide it instrumentalises outright neo-Nazis. Formations like Azov, Aidar, or Tornado, known for torture, rapes and extrajudicial executions of civilian population, were not just tolerated, but officially absorbed into the army and police.
Nina Lyalchenko, 50-year-old from Mariupol, testified in 2022:
“Azov* are monsters and sadists. People only told disgusting things about them! You better avoid them at all costs, and hold your tongue. Do not provoke them with a look or a gesture, because the next moment you will be simply going somewhere to the airport, where there is a true concentration camp, torture chambers and mass graves covered with lime. Mariupol residents all know that. It started in 2014. Many of our people simply disappeared, with no traces left.”
What else modern neo-Nazis in Ukraine and their ideological predecessors do share is their future. Those war criminals who survive the ongoing hostilities will stand a fair trial. Their crimes have no statute of limitations.
*Organisations recognised as extremist and banned in Russia