A city in West-Central Ukraine decided to change the name of a street from Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author, to Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist leader with links to the Nazis during WWII.

The city council of Vinnitsa said it voted in favor of the name change to continue its “process of decolonization.”

Serhiy Morhunov, the mayor, did not respond to an email inquiry from The Trends Journal asking why they would honor a Nazi supporter and erase Tolstoy’s name.

The city said the move will include 232 streets, lanes, driveways, and dead ends. 

The council said it wanted to pay special attention to honoring those they call “heroes of the national liberation struggle.”

TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has reported extensively on Bandera to illustrate that the history of animosity between Russia and Ukraine did not start with the 24 February invasion.

(See “TOP UKRAINIAN AMBASSADOR: HEIL HITLER,” and “PRO-NAZI WAR HAWK UKRAINE AMBASSADOR’S SON DODGING DRAFT IN GERMANY.”)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the Ukrainian government has carried out a brutal campaign against its population in eastern Ukraine, who the Russians have since liberated. He said they were living under “neo-Nazis.”

Putin said many from the region have already fled due to the artillery and rocket fire from these “neo-Nazi militants.”

“In Zaporozhye, the Kherson region, as well as Lugansk and Donetsk, people have seen and are seeing the atrocities that neo-Nazis conduct in the occupied areas of the Kharkov region,” Putin said. “The heirs of Bandera and Nazi punishers kill people, torture, throw them in prison, settle scores, crack down, abuse civilians.”

He continued, “Russia can’t give up people close to her to be torn apart by executioners and fail to respond to their desire to determine their own fate.”

Russia Today’s report said Kyiv has also renamed one of its streets after the Azov regiment, which is known to have neo-Nazis in its ranks. (See “UKRAINE’S AZOV BATTALION: ‘NAZI’S OR ‘FAR-RIGHT?’ DON’T CALL A SPADE A SPADE.”)

We’ve noted that the battalion formed in May 2014 and was comprised of civilian volunteers from neo-Nazi groups who faced off against Russian separatists in places like Donbass. They were known to engage in “xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideals and physically assaulted migrants, the Roma community, and people opposing their views,” Al Jazeera reported.

Despite the major media and western politicians long denying there are Nazi brigades fighting the Russians in Ukraine, the AP report said that the Azov Battalion was one of the reasons Putin said he invaded the country. 

Putin said he wanted to “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.”