MOSCOW. Oct 20 (Interfax) - The Russian Investigative Committee has charged in absentia Yaroslav Gunko (Hunka), a 98-year-old resident of Canada who fought for the Nazis during WWII, with committing genocide in the Lvov region, the committee said on Telegram on Friday.
"The Russian Investigative Committee's Main Investigative Department has charged Ukrainian nationalist Yaroslav Hunka (also known as Gunko and Gunka) in absentia with committing genocide of civilians in the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Great Patriotic War [of 1941-1945], the statement said.
Preparations are being made for putting Hunka on the international wanted list and ordering his arrest in absentia, the committee said, adding that requests for legal assistance had been filed with Canada, Poland and Belarus.
A scandal erupted in Canada at the end of September after it became know that 98-year-old Gunko, a resident of Canada invited to the Canadian Parliament for a speech by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, fought for the Nazis during WWII. Speaker of the Canadian Parliament's House of Commons Anthony Rota, who invited Gunka, had to resign.
Investigators "have obtained documentary evidence of the locations and hostilities involving the SS Galician Division, which Hunka was a member of," from the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian Defense Ministry's Central Archives, the committee said.
"In April 1943, Hitler decided to form the 14th Volunteer Infantry Division, SS Galician, made up of Ukrainian volunteers. Yaroslav Hunka, a native of the village of Uman in the Second Polish Republic born in 1925, joined the Nazi detachment," it said.
According to the archives, "SS Gacilian Division members, including Hunka, committed to the main idea of Nazism [of] a racially pure state (of the Aryan race) and seeking to eradicate Slavs and other ethnic groups residing on the territory of the occupied Lvov region of the Ukrainian SSR, killed and seriously injured such people and created living conditions that would lead to their extermination," the committee said.
"For instance, on February 23-28, 1944, Hunka and other members of the detachment followed the criminal orders of their commanders and killed at least 500 Soviet citizens in Guta Penyatskaya (a former village in the Brodsky district of the Lvov region of the Ukrainian SSR). The victims included Jews and Poles. People were shot and killed and burned alive in houses and a church," the committee said. "Such actions violate the Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed in the Hague, on October 18, 1907," it said.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said earlier this week that Russian and Belarusian law enforcement agencies should consider ways to extradite Hunka from Canada.
"Considering that the Canadian government and international organizations have officially acknowledged Yaroslav Hunka to be a war criminal as a former member of the Waffen SS Galician Division, I order that a request for the Canadian authorities and Interpol be promptly analyzed together with Russian and Belarusian law enforcement agencies for his extradition to conduct public judicial proceedings," the Russian Defense Ministry quoted Shoigu as saying during a closed-door part of a joint board meeting of the Russian and Belarusian defense ministries on Wednesday.