Ukrainian authorities recently transferred the remains of one of history’s most controversial figures. Andriy Atanasovych Melnyk, the leader of the separatist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), is best known in the history of Central and Eastern Europe as a collaborator with Nazi Germany, although, unlike his rival Stepan Bandera, he operated largely from exile.

The better-known Bandera has been honored with statues or busts in cities such as Lviv and in 2010 was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine by then-President Viktor Yushchenko. The former reformist and pro-Western leader also visited the final resting place of Symon Petliura at Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris in 2005. Since 2017, Petliura has also had a statue in Vinnytsia.

As commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian People’s Army between 1918 and 1921 and leader of the resistance against Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky, Petliura headed forces that, after the Bolshevik Revolution, carried out a series of pogroms against the then large Jewish population in the former western territories of the Russian Empire.

A Question of Belonging

Apart from tough statements from Poland, which has long pushed for the exhumation of victims of the Volyn massacre carried out by the Bandera-led Ukrainian rebel army, the rest of Europe has largely opted for diplomatic silence. The reason is prosaic: Ukraine is the embattled state in the largest conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.

For countries such as the US, Germany and Britain, old historical wounds are therefore not reason enough to weaken support for Kyiv. Unlike Poland, they do not share a bloody history with the Ukrainians.

Yuri Makarov, a former editor-in-chief of Ukrainian public television, told The New York Times that the war had pushed Zelensky and much of the country into a more pronounced national identity politics, driven by growing hatred of Russia.

It is also true that Zelensky relies as far as possible on one of the few Ukrainian institutions still able to function: the army. Unlike the Verkhovna Rada or the cabinet, however, the armed forces include a powerful nationalist current, strengthened further by Russia’s invasion.

That current gained influence in part because nationalists from groups such as Right Sector, the Svoboda party and the Azov volunteer battalion were among those who did most to reinforce Ukraine’s defenses in the first days and months of the war. They turned their conviction that the homeland had to be defended into action.

Veterans of the Azov milieu later became central to the 3rd Army Corps, which was formed around the 3rd Assault Brigade and is commanded by Andriy Biletsky, the founder and first commander of the Azov Battalion. Biletsky, his deputy Maksym Zhorin and the unit’s ideologue Oleksiy Reyns are well-known names in Ukraine and abroad.

These men and their allies or supporters have been linked to protests against Black Lives Matter, backing for legislation modeled on Russia’s ban on LGBT propaganda and threats directed at the head of state.

Serhiy Sternenko, a popular nationalist who once headed Right Sector’s Odesa branch, indirectly threatened Zelensky in The Times. If the president handed unconquered territory to Russia, Sternenko said, “he would be a corpse – politically, and then for real”.

The brutality of the actions and rhetoric is, of course, inseparable from the ongoing war. But Ukrainian national identity has long defined itself against Poland or Russia. In western Ukraine, the memory of Danylo Romanovych of Halych, the King of Rus crowned with the blessing of Pope Innocent IV, has been cultivated. In Kyiv, the emphasis falls on the Rurik dynasty as a whole, while in Zaporizhzhia it falls on the Cossacks.

These different historical trajectories continue to shape cultural identities today. One example is the Belarusians, Eastern Slavs whose historical development was shaped by Orthodoxy and by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They, too, define themselves as a people distinct from the Russians of Moscow or Novgorod in today’s Russian Federation.

Europe Pays

Beyond Ukraine’s cultural and symbolic departure from “European values”, as former British secret service director Richard Moore rather clumsily defined them, Kyiv’s leadership has also been worn down by a more immediate problem: the main guarantor of its support is losing patience with the war. President Donald Trump’s move away from unwavering backing has unnerved Ukrainian negotiators and pushed them gradually away from America.

While Ukraine and Russia entered peace talks as warring parties, with the military balance shifting between them at different stages, the US and Russia negotiated as superpowers and strategic adversaries. Trump was therefore willing to make concessions to Moscow on some issues. In Kyiv, that was perceived as a betrayal or at least a geopolitical U-turn.

Although Peter Magyar’s victory helped clear the way for the release of the €90bn loan, which again exceeded the level of US funding, Zelensky also had to contend with a de facto refusal of fast-track admission to the EU.

European leaders had dangled that prospect almost from the beginning of the war. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was the first to extinguish those hopes, paradoxically by proposing the creation of an “associate member” status whose representatives would attend meetings but have no voting rights.

Zelensky rejected the proposed half-membership out of hand, as did representatives of Slovakia and Hungary. It may therefore be only a matter of time before the Ukrainian leader loses patience with the old continent.

The Gulf Provides

At the end of March, he embarked on a political tour of Middle Eastern states with which Ukraine shares a common geopolitical enemy. In exchange for large investments in Ukraine’s defense sector, apparently in petrodollars, he offered the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Qatar expertise in drone defense.

Ukraine and the Arab states also lie on the edges of the former Byzantine Empire’s sphere of influence, giving them at least a distant historical link. Today, however, their alignment is more practical: they are pawns in a broader confrontation with the anti-American CRINK axis.

CRINK is an acronym formed from the English names of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Their deepening cooperation is helping to create a common Eurasian identity, precisely the adversary the US faces as its main strategic challenge. Washington, in turn, relies on smaller players such as Kyiv and Abu Dhabi.

The United States, a NATO member, captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and is now working to subdue Cuba. Together with Israel, it has also attacked Iran. All three states share one strategic ally: Russia.

Turkey, also a NATO member, supported Sunni extremists in the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a Russian ally, with the blessing of the US and Israel. France, another NATO member, is protecting its economic interests, including uranium mines in Niger, and entering proxy wars in the Sahara against the Wagner group.

Seen in that light, Trump appears to be weakening Russia as a strategic enemy through dozens of separate moves, even though meetings between foreign ministers in Riyadh and presidents in Alaska created an impression that led establishment media to label him “pro-Russian”.

Ukraine, however, is clearly no longer comfortable with its role as a pawn in the American shield and is consequently turning to players in a similar position. Although the Emirates and Qatar lie farther away than Germany and France, their support is tangible in a way many European promises are not.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s move away from dependence on the West has acquired a symbolic final flourish: open support for the glorification of controversial historical figures, which evokes historical nightmares not only in Poland.

Sooner or later, the transfer of the remains of collaborators with Hitler’s Germany will also affect public opinion in Germany. Berlin, after all, also treats a party led by a dual Swiss citizen who lives with her female partner, a Tamil immigrant, as an example of right-wing extremism.

The commemorations of Melnyk, the statues of Bandera and Petliura and the protests against migration from India therefore hardly look like the cultivation of the “European values” to which successive German chancellors claim to subscribe. At the same time, they mark another symbolic step in Ukraine’s departure not only from the US, but also from the EU.