Controversial Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera is to have a street — and a sausage — named in his honor by officials in Kiev.
The move comes as part of a drive by the country to shake off its Communist past.
Eighty-seven of the 97 Ukrainian deputies present voted to change the Moscovsky Prospekt street in the capital to Stepan Bandera Prospekt, politician Yury Sirotyuk wrote on Facebook. A number of other Russian and Soviet street names were changed, including Bauman Street and Kutuzov Street.
A sausage factory in the Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankivsk has also decided to rebrand its trademark Moskovsky sausage and name it after the nationalist hero, the Ukrainian Vesti newspaper reported Thursday.
“We've made Moskovsky sausage for a long time,” one factory employee told the newspaper, “but now it will be called “Banderovsky.”
Bandera, who fought Soviet and Polish forces for Ukrainian independence has regained some popularity in Ukraine in recent years. He remains a highly divisive figure for collaborating with the Nazis during World War II.
Bandera became head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a group campaigning for an independent Ukrainian state, in 1933.
The organization later formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), which carried out guerrilla attacks against Polish and Soviet forces.
The UIA received Nazi support to carry out their attacks, but Bandera was later sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He continued working with OUN after the war, but was assassinated by the KGB in Munich in 1959.
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko posthumously named Bandera Hero of Ukraine in 2010, but the award was officially annulled in January 2011 following condemnation from the European Parliament.
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