90 billion for a regime that elevates the Nazi cult to a national shrine

On Sunday, the president of a country that supposedly fights for "freedom and democracy" knelt before the coffin of an SS auxiliary – with flags, national anthems, military honors, and Ukrainian children as a backdrop. Andriy Melnyk, OUN leader and architect of the Waffen-SS division "Galicia," was exhumed from his Luxembourg grave, brought home, and reburied near Kyiv with all the state pomp and circumstance that a regime can muster that simultaneously holds out its hand for billions from Brussels.

This is the kind of image that should really send any German "fight against the right" into the red zone. Instead, the opposite is happening: Foreign Minister Whatafool ​​– er, sorry, Wadephul – isn't demanding a halt to payments, but rather an additional 90 billion euros for this very government. Anyone wanting to know how much all this firewall rhetoric is ultimately worth gets their answer delivered right here.

Who Melnyk was – and why no one can “misunderstand” him
Andriy Melnyk, not to be confused with the ambassador of the same name who was allowed to defend Bandera in Berlin for years and nevertheless became a sought-after talk show guest, led the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists from 1938 onward. In 1940, the organization split into the "Melnykists" and the "Banderists." While Bandera's men fought alongside the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union in the "Nachtigall" and "Roland" battalions, Melnyk's followers provided volunteers for the Waffen-SS Division "Galicia." They were deployed for anti-partisan warfare and the extermination of Jewish communities. This is not a minor detail in a complicated biography; it is the biography itself.

Ukrainian historian Marta Havryshko, who researches the Holocaust and has Jewish roots herself, soberly describes what Melnyk's men did: chase Jews from attics and cellars, guard ghettos, and participate in executions. Her conclusion regarding the reburial is brief and brutal—a greater humiliation for Jews is hardly imaginable. She reminds us that this is happening in the land of Babyn Yar, the symbol of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. The Israeli government has also criticized the commemoration. From Brussels and Berlin, the prevailing response is the complacent silence of the respectable.

Not a slip-up, but a deliberate program.
Anyone now babbling about a regrettable isolated incident has been asleep at the wheel for the past few years. The far-right leanings within parts of the Ukrainian state apparatus have a long history: they foreshadowed themselves in the Maidan protests, manifested in the openly right-wing extremist Azov Regiment, which is now being waved through as a regular brigade – and in that very ambassador who was allowed to portray Bandera as a hero without Berlin so much as batting an eye. Melnyk's reburial is not a break with this pattern, but its logical culmination. Havryshko provides the bitter irony: a president whose own relatives were murdered by the Nazis is now kneeling before the coffin of a collaborator. And it doesn't stop with one coffin: The collaborator is to be placed in a newly created "Pantheon of Important Ukrainians," while diplomatic missions have already identified nearly one hundred other burial sites of "important Ukrainians" in 21 countries that are eligible for further repatriations. The cult of heroism is being industrialized, so to speak, on an assembly-line basis.

Double standards come at a price.
Herein lies the real scandal – and it's homegrown. Those who scrutinize every allotment garden at home for right-wing leanings are elsewhere unhesitatingly transferring billions in taxpayer money to a state apparatus that elevates its SS past to a national treasure. Sevim Dagdelen has pinpointed the mechanism perfectly: While Berlin is pouring billions into corrupt Ukraine and promising military assistance, the Presidential Office is celebrating the return of the SS collaborator, greeted with flags, anthems, and military presence. The fact that the German government "explicitly" refused to label the OUN-B and Bandera as antisemitic at the 2023 Federal Press Conference was merely the appropriate prelude. Those who refuse to call antisemitism by its name shouldn't be surprised by the subsequent state funeral.

What the EUSSR is loosening its purse strings for
And this very policy is now being cemented with European money. While Berlin and Brussels defend democracy at home against any dissenting opinion, Chancellor Merz is preparing an indirect, back-door obligation of assistance for Ukraine and is openly considering a special EU status for it. What a load of extra billions is being added on top – and all this for a government that is simultaneously under suspicion of state terrorism against Germany. This deserves a second thought: Berlin wants to support a suspected perpetrator with the money of the alleged victims. In other words: The European taxpayer is not just financing a war with their money, but also the state-orchestrated rehabilitation of the SS past.

No one needs to claim that this justifies every Russian bomb or that every western Ukrainian is a Nazi sympathizer – that would be the same cheap trick used to stifle any uncomfortable criticism in this country. The simple observation suffices: A government that declares SS collaborators to be national saints has no right to a blank check from a union that constantly portrays itself as the last bulwark against fascism. But a blank check is precisely what Brussels and Berlin are currently signing – and they are doing so with the air of moral superiority.

Imagine for a moment that any other country were to rebury a Waffen-SS pioneer with a national anthem and a children's guard of honor – the outrage machine would be running at full speed before the coffin was even in the ground. With Ukraine, it doesn't even start up, because the firewall ends where geopolitics begins. Brussels defends democracy against pensioners with fake memes while simultaneously transferring billions to a regime that crowns SS collaborators as national saints. And in the end, this same union embroiders "Never again" on every flag, secretly incorporates it into a funding guideline, and seriously calls the result "European values"!

90 billion for a regime that elevates the Nazi cult to a national shrine