German Ambassador criticizes march held in Kyiv on the day of creation of Galicia SS division

German Ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldguzen has negatively assessed the march to the day of creation of the Galicia SS division, which took place in Kyiv. This is stated on her Twitter.

"The Waffen-SS units participated in grave war crimes and the Holocaust during World War II. No volunteer organizations that are fighting and working in Ukraine today should be associated with them", - she wrote.

As previously reported, several hundred people held a procession of embroidered shirts dedicated to the Galicia division in Kyiv on the evening of April 28.

Head of the Institute of National Remembrance Anton Drobovich condemned the march.

Since 2017, the courts of Kyiv have considered the case on whether the symbols of the Galicia division fall under the law of Ukraine "On the Condemnation of the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Totalitarian Regimes in Ukraine and the Prohibition of the Promotion of their Symbols". On September 23, 2020, the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal overturned the decision of the District Administrative Court of May 27, 2020 on "recognizing as illegal the actions of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance to provide a conclusion that the symbols of the 14th SS Grenadier Division Galicia (1st Ukrainian Division of the UNA) in accordance with the current legislation of Ukraine is not a symbol of the National Socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regime, the spread or public use of which is prohibited in Ukraine.

The Court of Appeal also ruled that the first-instance court "went beyond its powers" in arguing that the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance had narrowed the concept of symbols of the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, which is contained in the Law of Ukraine "On the Condemnation of the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Totalitarian Regimes in Ukraine and the Prohibition of the Promotion of their Symbols", having excluded the symbols of the SS troops Galicia from it.