The information, that the governor of the Kherson Oblast Yuriy Odarchenko called Hitler a liberator and expressed gratitude to him in the speech addressed to the veterans and participants of the city meeting on May 9, is being widely spread throughout the Network. For example, Russian Channel One stated that “the official decided to thank to the dictator and the cruelest killer in the history of mankind for his attempt to liberate Ukraine from “the communist yoke”.
As a proof for this, journalists adduce the part of the video, where Odarchenko speaks about Hitler and provokes indignation and shouts “shame” from the audience. A young mother with a child even came up to the governor and pulled out a microphone. When he tried another, the crowd did not let him speak neither.
As a matter of fact Odarchenko could be blamed only for making his speech too complicated and recondite, which caused misunderstanding.
Here is a full version of official’s speech and following conflict:
Here are the exact words said by the governor:
“We are remembering how people fought against aggressors who were trying to conquer our land. These aggressors motivated their actions not only by the desire and not so much by the desire to seize foreign territories and to enslave people. They also advanced slogans about alleged liberation of nations, peoples living on the land, which Hitler was going to capture. If you watch… read history materials, nowadays there are lots of TV programs about this, we can see that above all he advanced slogans of people liberation from the tyranny of Stalin (noise starts among the audience), liberation from other things. It was the primary motive for Hitler. An advance on the sovereign state, when he was trying to conquer territories. But the people willing to defend their homeland united. They stood together to defend their homeland, threw back the aggressor to the lands, and showed that people were able to win back and they would be winning back their territory. Nowadays the same thing is happening on the borders of Ukraine. Nowadays aggressor is standing there, where with the help of slogans about alleged removal… of alleged oppressions… they are trying to carry out aggression on the territory. My friends, we all stand for…”
After that a woman pulled out a microphone from Odarchenko and threw it out.
As you can see from the official’s speech, he only reminded that starting the war Hitler declared an intention as if to liberate nations from Bolshevism. Odarchenko compared that situation with the current one, when Russian leaders were blaming Ukrainian government for oppressions, discrimination and persecution of people in Ukraine and used this as an excuse for separatist actions on the east of the country and its interference in Ukrainian affairs.
