LAST week’s unveiling of a monument to nazi collaborator and war criminal Zenovy Tershavetsky, who participated in the murder of 8,000 Jews in Poltava in 1941, is “not an isolated case” but a result of government policy, the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) said at the weekend.

KPU general secretary Petro Symonenko told the Morning Star he was not surprised that the town of Sambir had erected the bust of Tershavetsky on its Avenue of Glory as the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Andriy Parubiy, is the “undisguised nazi” who founded the Social Nationalist Party.

Tershavetsky was a member of Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which fought alongside the nazi invaders in the second world war. Mr Symonenko pointed out that — despite its role in the Holocaust — it was now illegal to deny the “heroism” of the OUN.