Assassination or suicide — under what circumstances did Stepan Bandera die 65 years ago?

The figure of Stepan Bandera has become a symbol in Ukraine, and during the times of full-scale war, the surname of the nationalist is increasingly heard from the lips of Ukrainians, especially among defenders. On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera was found dead in Munich — initially reported as a suicide, but later it was revealed to be an assassination.

How the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists died — read in a historical note from Novyny.LIVE.

Stepan Bandera's death

The date of Stepan Bandera's death is October 15, 1959. He was found in an apartment in Munich, and his neighbors said they heard a rumbling on the stairs. Forensic doctors reported that cyanide was found in his blood.

Cyanide is a poison. Small amounts of it occur naturally in certain foods, but pose no danger to humans. But artificial cyanide is used to make chemical weapons that kill. You can be poisoned by cyanide through eating and drinking, touching things that contain it, and inhaling its smell. 

The German police did not understand whether it was assassination or suicide. It was not until 1961, two years after Bandera's death, that new details emerged. Bohdan Stashynskyi, a KGB agent, stated that he had committed two political assassinations, one of which was the murder of Stepan Bandera. According to Stashynsky, he shot Bandera with a specially made gun that released acid fumes on the victim.

Historians say that Bohdan Stashynskyi shot Stepan Bandera with a cyanide gun while waiting for him. However, Bandera was still able to make it to his apartment. There, he died, and Stashynskyi received news the next morning that Bandera had been eliminated, thus the mission was completed.

"I was in a cinema in Berlin. Quite by chance, I saw footage from Bandera's funeral in a newsreel. I saw only one scene: Bandera in an open coffin, surrounded by people. When I saw this, it felt as if someone had hit me on the head with a hammer. I was terribly frightened. It was the first time I directly saw the consequences of my actions. I would like to say that I was aware of the consequences beforehand; I knew that people would die. But it's not the same: knowing something and actually seeing it. I was completely stunned when I left the cinema," said Stashynskyi in a report from the Institute of National Remembrance.

Stashynskyi was sentenced to eight years in prison. No one knows what happened to him afterward.

Stepan Bandera is buried in Munich at the Waldfriedhof cemetery. Historical videos show that at the end of the funeral procession, everyone sang the Ukrainian anthem.

As we mentioned earlier, according to historians, Stepan Bandera had an anti-imperial ethos and was ready to fight, even in seemingly hopeless situations. Russia still fears this and has been unable to suppress such resistance in Ukraine for hundreds of years.

Previously, we wrote who Stepan Bandera is and why Russians fear him.