Deaths on October 15

Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian soldier and politician (b. 1909)

Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (Ukrainian: Степа́н Андрі́йович Банде́ра, IPA: [steˈpɑn ɐnˈdʲrʲijowɪt͡ʃ bɐnˈdɛrɐ]; Polish: Stepan Andrijowycz Bandera; 1 January 1909 – 15 October 1959) was a Ukrainian politician and theorist of the militant wing of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and a leader and ideologist of Ukrainian ultranationalists known for his involvement in terrorist activities.Born in Galicia (at the time Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, part of Austria-Hungary) into the family of a Greek-Catholic priest, young Bandera became a Ukrainian nationalist. After the Empire disintegrated in the wake of World War I, Galicia briefly became a West Ukrainian People's Republic; following the Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918–1919, it was integrated into eastern Poland. In this period, Bandera became radicalized, and after Polish authorities refused to let him leave for Czechoslovakia to study, he enrolled at the Lviv Polytechnic, where he organized Ukrainian nationalist organizations. For orchestrating the 1934 assassination of Poland's Minister of the Interior Bronisław Pieracki, Bandera was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1939, following the joint German–Soviet invasion of Poland, Bandera was released from prison, and he moved to Kraków in the German-occupied zone of Poland.

Bandera cultivated German military circles favorable to Ukrainian independence, and organized OUN expeditionary groups. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, he prepared the 30 June 1941 Proclamation of Ukrainian statehood in Lviv, pledging to work with Nazi Germany. For his refusal to rescind the decree, Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo, which put him under house arrest on 5 July 1941, and later between 1942 and 1943 sent him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1944, with Germany rapidly losing ground in the war in the face of the advancing Allied armies, Bandera was released in the hope that he would be instrumental in deterring the advancing Soviet forces. He set up the headquarters of the re-established Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, which worked underground. He settled with his family in West Germany where he remained the leader of the OUN-B and worked with several anti-communist organizations such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations as well as with the British intelligence agencies. Fourteen years after the end of the war, Bandera was assassinated in 1959 by KGB agents in Munich.On 22 January 2010, the outgoing President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine. The European Parliament condemned the award, as did Russia, Polish, and Jewish politicians and organizations. The incoming president Viktor Yanukovych declared the award illegal, since Bandera was never a citizen of Ukraine, a stipulation necessary for getting the award. This announcement was confirmed by a court decision in April 2010. In January 2011, the award was officially annulled. A proposal to confer the award on Bandera was rejected by the Ukrainian parliament in August 2019.Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine, with some Ukrainians hailing him as a liberator who fought against the Soviet, Polish and Nazi states while trying to establish an independent Ukraine, while other Ukrainians as well as Poland and Russia condemn him as a fascist and a war criminal who was, together with his followers, largely responsible for the massacres of Polish civilians and partially for the Holocaust in Ukraine.