One of the four bills in the package, On the Legal Status and Honouring of Fighters for Ukraine’s Independence in the Twentieth Century, covers a long list of individuals and organisations from human rights activists to guerrillas accused of ethnic cleansing. It would allow veterans of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), followers of Bandera, to receive state benefits, and rules that denial or disrespect of their role in fighting for Ukrainian independence is an unlawful “desecration of their memory”.

But even a cursory knowledge of Bandera and the two militias will reveal how contentious their role in history has been - not just for Ukraine and Russia but for Europe. This is especially true for Poland, Ukraine’s current ally against Russia.

Imprisoned for fighting Polish authorities in west Ukraine in the 1930s, Bandera briefly joined sides with the German army to fight the Soviets, only to fall out with both half the OUN and with the Nazis who returned him to prison for most of the war.

In 1943–4, fighters from both militias were implicated in the slaughter of an estimated 70,000–100,000 ethnic Poles in Volhyn and Galicia; there were also atrocities against the Jewish population. After the war, the militias continued a partisan struggle until the 1950s; Bandera emigrated to Germany to be courted by French and British secret services until he was assassinated in 1959 by a KGB agent.