Ukrainian decommunization laws

[7][2][8] The laws passed on April 9, 2015, in the Verkhovna Rada with overwhelming support[7] and were enacted by president Petro Poroshenko on May 15 that year.

[9] This started a six-month period for the removal of communist monuments and renaming of public places named after communist-related themes.

[11] In May 2017, 46 Ukrainian MPs, mainly from the Opposition Bloc faction, appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to declare the laws unconstitutional.

[18][8] The 2538-1 law has also been controversial abroad, since some of the organizations and individuals that it is to be honoring are recognized as having participated in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, and Communists during the Holocaust in Ukraine and massacres in Volhynia.

[20] Former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller declared in a televised interview that OUN was responsible for mass murders of Poles, and challenged the Ukrainian law enforcement to persecute him.

[23] As a result of the law mandating the removal of communist-era monuments, and renaming places named after communist themes Ukraine's toponymy was radically altered and the face of whole cities has been changed.

[24] In the second-largest city of Ukraine,[25] Kharkiv, more than 200 streets, 5 administrative raions, 4 parks and 1 metro station had been renamed by early February 2016.

[31] There had been several previous attempts to provide former Ukrainian nationalist fighters with official veteran status, especially during the 2005-2009 administration President Viktor Yushenko, but all failed.