The nationalist leader Stepan Bandera has been canonized, according to the Russian press, which is disseminating this propaganda narrative to prove that Ukrainian society is a Nazi one and must be further denazified by the Russian army. In reality, Bandera has not been canonized and there is no initiative in this regard.
NEWS: “In Ukraine, Stepan Bandera has been recognized as saint. The canonization decision was adopted on June 20 at the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It is a well-known fact that Bandera was an active collaborator of the Nazis. However, in Ukraine he’s been declared a national hero because now everyone there has a loyal attitude towards Nazism.
And behold, Bandera is already holy. Unfortunately, every time the Kyiv regime seems to have fallen into the deepest sin, it once again proves that it can fall even further “into the fiery hell”.
NARRATIVE: The nationalist leader Stepan Bandera has been canonized in Ukraine.
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: In order to prove to the public in Russia and the populations of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics that Ukrainian society is Nazi and deserves the special denazification operation, the Russian press writes that last century nationalist leader Stepan Bandera has been canonized by The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which obtained the its autonomy-granting Tomos in 2019. In reality, there has never been such an initiative. The Holy Synod did not convene on June 20, as the Russian media claim. The latest Synod of Bishops was held on May 24th, according to the website of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. All the initiatives and discussions on canonization, which from a procedural point of view could take from a few months to a few years, can be found on the official website. There is no mention whatsoever of Stepan Bandera.
The Russian press also cites a document signed by the Metropolitan Bishop of Kyiv and All Ukraine, Epiphanius, which reads that the canonization decision “comes into effect today”. The document contains serious Ukrainian language stylistic errors and does not observe the form and spirit of such documents.
At the same time, while constructing this propaganda narrative, the Russian press ignored an important nuance: Stepan Bandera was a Greek Catholic and theoretically cannot be canonized by a church other than the one to which he belonged. The image used by the Russian press showing, seemingly, the icon of Stepan Bandera, was copied from the TSN news site in Kyiv, and it’s actually a portrait of Stepan's father, Andrei Bandera, a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic leader, who was killed in 1941. An initiative to recognize Andrei Bndera as a martyr of the Greek Catholic Church did exist in 2015, but to no avail. The Russian press copied the image of Andrei Bandera from the news published in 2015 on the Kyiv website and reported it as an icon of Stepan Bandera.
The propaganda narrative aims to justify in the eyes of the Russian public opinion the military actions carried out against the population of Ukraine, proving that the Ukrainians are dominated by neo-Nazi ideas and are falling more and more “into the fiery hell”.
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