Hello and thank you for downloading witness on the BBC World Service with me,

Dean Neumann. Today I'm taking you back to Western Ukraine during World War II

when far-right Ukrainian nationalists tried to create an independent state in the region.

They had hoped that Hitler would support their claims,

but their hopes barely lasted a week.

It's June 30th, 1941, and Nazi troops have just marched through the city of Lembert, now called Lavev, shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainian nationalist fighters.

Many Ukrainians welcome to them with flowers. On the day of the Nazi takeover from Soviet

occupying forces the organization of Ukrainian nationalists proclaimed an

independent Ukrainian state hoping that Hitler would back their ambitions.

In accordance with the will of the Ukrainian people,

the organization of Ukrainian nationalists

under the leadership of Stepan Bandera declares the re-establishment of the Ukrainian state.

Stepan Bandera was the charismatic leader of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists or Aung. The newly established Ukrainian state will closely cooperate with the National Socialist Great Germany,

which under the leadership of Adolf Hitler is creating a new order in Europe and the world.

Before the Second World War Ukraine had been split between East and West for centuries, first between the Russian Empire

and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later between the Soviet Union and the Polish Republic.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was a fringe foreign. The organization in interwar Poland.

The organization in inter-war Poland.

Professor Timothy Snyder specialises in Eastern European history at Yale.

Ideologically, the Owen is in favor of the nationally homogeneous Ukrainian state.

Among many other things, it was anti-Semitic. I mean, it was also anti-Russian and anti-Polish but they had a kind of typically

far-right or fascist idea that the Jews were part of a conspiracy against them

...