‘Teresa & Maria’ is the song that alyona alyona and Jerry Heil take to the Eurovision Song Contest in 2024 representing Ukraine, one of the 10 countries that made it to the final in the first semi-final of the festival, held this week. And this same week, upon confirming the Kyiv participation in the song contest, the controversy broke out. Last March, Jerry Heil uploaded a video to his social networks which then went unnoticed, but since WarNewsPL X accountfrom Poland, have made an important detail of the small recording: the singer is wearing a sweatshirt with the word BANDERACIAGA.

It is a clothing line that uses a name that is a clear play on words between the luxury Spanish brand Balenciaga and the name of a hero for some, Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian far-right to whom Vladimir Putin refers on numerous occasions to remember who Russia’s enemies are. He is one of the most honored figures among Ukrainian nationalists and among far-right groups in the country.

Following the video, Polish politics Anna-Maria Żukowskaa member of the left-wing Lewica party, warned that “this time” I would not vote for Ukraine in Eurovision. “If Ukraine focuses on promoting Bandera in its historical politics, it will discourage Europe, which has a clear opinion on the Nazi collaborators“he wrote on his X profile.

“What do they have in common [Stepan] Bandera and Balenciaga? Freedom. Freedom of the nation, freedom of the body, freedom of movement, freedom of expression”: this explanation comes from the website of the manufacturer of Banderaciaga, according to information collected by several Polish media. “Cristobal Balenciaga had a reputation as a designer with uncompromising standards and Christian Dior He even called him ‘the best teacher among us all’. Stepan Bandera was also uncompromising in his struggle and wanted full independence for the Ukrainian nation,” he continues.

From Poland, social networks have been filled with criticism against the singer, some even referring to his stage name —the artist Jerry Heil’s real name is Yana Oleksandrivna Shemaieva—, which includes the word ‘Heil’, which is part of the traditional Nazi salute, Heil Hitler. However, she herself explained that her stage name comes from the name of the cartoon character Jerry Mouse and the “first American surname she liked” by searching on the Internet. “Heil should be pronounced like ‘Hale’, and not like the Nazi salute,” she points out in a report published in Kyiv Post.

The well-known Polish musician and composer Jan Pospieszalski has also reacted to what many have wanted to call ‘Flaggate‘, ensuring that he was left “speechless” when seeing the images of the young artist. “I will write this: no to teaching Ukrainian history in Polish schools. Let’s give Ukrainian children studying in Poland the opportunity to know the true story“.

Who was Stepan Bandera and why is Poland angry?

Stepan Andriyovich Bandera (1909-1959) was a Ukrainian politician, far-right nationalist, member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In 1933 he became leader of the radicals on the ground and defended an “intransigent stance in the fight against the real and supposed oppressors of the Ukrainian people”, as explained by Gennadi Knepper in ‘Heroes or Villains? Ukrainian radical nationalism in the Second World War’, published in the Catalan History Magazine in 2022.

In 1934, Stepan Bandera was sentenced to life imprisonment for having organized the attack that ended with the assassination of the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs, Bronislaw Peracki. “The fact that he was persecuted as one of the main leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist youth contributed to the emergence of the heroic myth about Bandera, which partly explains his unique importance in the initial period of the Second World War, when after the Poland’s military fiasco managed to regain his freedom,” Knepper points out in his study.

Upon release from prison, the OUN split into two organizations, OUN-M and OUN-B, this second being the one led by Bandera. Faced with the more “cautious” stance of the OUN-M in search of Ukrainian independence, Stepan Bandera’s supporters defended the need to organize and call for a “revolution” in order to found a “sovereign, national and social, on the ruins of the Moscow empire of the USSR”.

After the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, Bandera declared in Lviv —territory occupied by Nazi Germany— Ukrainian independence, and despite his links with Nazi Germany, he ended up being arrested by the Gestapo and interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, although in a sector reserved for political prisoners, “who received privileged treatment.” There he was held until the end of World War II.

In 2010, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko declared Stepan Bandera National Hero of Ukraine, a title that was rejected by the European Parliament. Yushchenko, for his part, has never regretted it. “What is Bandera accused of? Of having promoted the independence of Ukraine in 1941,” he explained in an interview with El Mundo in 2022.

“A national hero is one who fought for the independence and freedom of his country. Russian propaganda claims convince Europeans that we are anti-Semitic, something impossible since this has always been a country that welcomed millions of Jews for a century. There were Jews in every village. My grandmother protected and hid three Jews (during World War II). Bandera did not walk on the waters of the Dead Sea. He was not a saint and there are pages of his biography that I do not want to discussbut they cannot be taken out of context,” he said then.