Chechen leader Kadyrov said in a post on his social platform VK that "Chechen warriors are looking for Bandera Z-men everywhere and trying to eliminate them one by one." By Bandera, Kadyrov is not referring to a single person, but to a group of Stjepan Bandera's followers.
Stepan Bandera, a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism, was born in 1909 in Ivano-Frankivsk, western Ukraine, which was still under Austro-Hungarian rule. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I, a "People's Republic of Western Ukraine" was briefly established in western Ukraine, but it was soon annexed by Poland. At this time, the eastern Ukraine region was the territory of Soviet Russia.
The Polish government carried out a policy of forced assimilation in western Ukraine and interfered with their religious beliefs. Young people in western Ukraine are very disgusted by this, including Stepan Bandera. When Bandera went to college, he joined secret nationalist groups whose goal was to break away from Polish rule and establish his own state.
In 1933 Bandera plotted to assassinate the Polish Minister of the Interior, but the operation failed, and Bandera was arrested and imprisoned, first sentenced to death, and then commuted to life imprisonment.
In 1939, the Soviet Union partitioned Poland, and Bandera was released from prison. Why he was released from prison is still a secret, because it was not the Polish government that released him, nor did it release him because of the pressure of the Soviet Union, perhaps he escaped from prison at the time of the chaos in the partition of Poland by the Soviet Union.
After the Partition of Poland by the Soviet Union and Germany, ukrainian nationalists were divided into moderates and radicals. Radicals believed in actively seeking cooperation with Nazi Germany, while moderates believed in keeping a distance from Nazi Germany. Bandera is radical.
When Nazi Germany occupied all of Ukraine in 1941, Bandera issued the Declaration of the Restoration of Ukraine, in which they declared a unified Ukraine (including the Eastern region) and expressed their willingness to "jointly establish a new european and world order under Hitler's leadership." Bandera preferred to cooperate with the Nazis rather than choose the Soviet Union, because Bandera had been a staunch anti-Soviet since the October Revolution and was very wary of the Soviet Union.
Bandera's cooperation with the Nazis always required a petition, and he launched a "Lviv Project" (Lviv is a city in western Ukraine) to arrest Jews and Poles. The early days of cooperation were pleasant, but bandera's radical nationalist tendencies later provoked Nazi resentment. There were differences between Nazi Germany's desire to include Ukraine in its territory and Bandera's desire to establish an independent Ukrainian state. Later, the Nazis could not get off work, arrested him, and imprisoned him in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
In 1944, when the Soviets conquered all of Ukraine, the Nazis felt valued bandera again, after all, this brother was very anti-Soviet. So with the support of the Nazis, Bandera formed the Ukrainian Resistance Army. They assisted the Nazis in executing many of the Jews, Russians, and so on who were imprisoned in concentration camps.
Ukrainian rebels
When the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, Bandera, stained with blood, could not stay in Ukraine and went into seclusion in Munich, Germany. But the Soviets would not let him go and had been looking for Bandera. In 1959 Soviet KGB agents discovered Bandera and poisoned him with cyanide.
Bandra in the 50s
Bandera is a man of great controversy. He was not a Member of the Nazi Party, but an out-and-out Nazi. In Ukraine, however, there are large numbers of people who consider Bandera a national hero who fought all his life to build an independent Ukraine, but some means are debatable (such as cooperating with the Nazis). By and large, the Ukrainians' "hero" of Bandera overshadowed the Nazis.
In 2010, Ukrainian President Yushchenko posthumously awarded Bandera the title of "National Hero of Ukraine" (Yushchenko, the president of Ukraine who was poisoned and disfigured). The incident caused an uproar, and Israel, Poland, Russia and other countries criticized it.
Yushchenko presents flowers to the bandra statue
The following year, the pro-Russian Yanukovych came to power and immediately abolished Bandera as a "Ukrainian national hero", but the trend of worship of Bandera in Ukraine did not subside, and there were a large number of bandera fans from politicians to civilians. These bandera's adherents, mildly called Ukrainian nationalists, and radical (as in Russian parlance) were neo-Nazis.
Putin and Kadyrov believe that the Chechen separatist forces have the support of Ukrainian nationalists (Kadyrov said Bandra Zaz) behind them, so this high-profile Chechen military dispatch is to enhance the strength of the Russian army, and second, to combat the arrogance of the Chechen separatist forces. According to my article on Kadyrov VK, the main task of the Chechen army entering Ukraine is precisely to eliminate the "Banderas". He has written in several articles saying that "my brother so-and-so is leading the Chechen warriors in pursuit of bandras" and so on.