© Yuriy Dyachyshyn / AFP
The decision was taken on Thursday, with 69 legislators voting in favor. An attempt to push the renaming through the same council failed last December, when it won only 41 votes. This time, the bill's sponsors managed to collect the 61-vote benchmark needed to pass the draft into law.
Shukhevich is a controversial figure in Ukrainian history. Born in what is now western Ukraine, he joined the ranks of a radical, nationalist group called the Ukrainian Military Organization in 1925, when his homeland was part of Poland. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was involved in killing a number of Polish officials and ethnic Ukrainians that the organization considered to be collaborators.
In 1935, he and some of his fellow terrorists were caught, and Shukhevich was handed down a prison sentence that he served until 1937.
In 1941, Shukhevich became commander of the Nachtigall Battalion, a Nazi German unit formed from Ukrainian nationalists drafted to fight the Soviet Union. According to some accounts, the unit was involved in pogroms in the city of Lvov in late June of 1941, though those allegations are disputed.
The unit was finally recalled and disbanded because its Nazi superiors disapproved when the nationalists declared an independent Ukrainian state allied with Germany with Lvov as its capital. However, Shukhevich continued his service in Belarus as a Nazi company commander in Nachtigall's successor, Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201, which was used for guard duty, sweeping woods for partisans, and rounding up the Jewish population.
