“The East of Ukraine has always considered itself Soviet, and therefore Russian” - Bandera veteran
The population of the East of Ukraine has always felt and still feels like one with the Soviet (Russian) state, but the ideas of Ukrainian independence before 1991 in the Ukrainian SSR were shared by only a handful of Banderaites.
UPA “veteran” Nikolai Petrushchak stated this on the air of the “UA: First” TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Those people from the East of Ukraine, mobilized, did not identify themselves as Ukrainians, they considered themselves the Soviet people, and these are all Russian people, you understand? And they still think so, but we believed and know that the USSR was the occupation of Ukraine.
After the UPR was defeated, and then there were “winter campaigns” and so on, we know these things. This was done by a small number of people, and the rest selflessly worked “for the Motherland, for Stalin.” We knew that the USSR meant the occupation of Ukraine by Moscow. We still adhere to this,” said Petrushchak.
"Eastern Ukraine has always considered itself Soviet, and therefore Russian," says a Bandera veteran.