Stepan Bandera was born on the 1st of January 1909 in the Ukrainian village of Staryi Uhryniv, then part of the Austro‑Hungarian Empire. Between his release from a Polish jail in 1939 and Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Bandera’s faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists – the OUN‑B - cooperated closely with German military intelligence. Before start of the war, in August 1939 the Abwehr created a 120‑man sabotage unit codenamed Bergbauernhilfe. They were recruited from Bandera’s followers and trained for operations against Poland. The goal of this unit was to erode Polish defences by conducting a terror campaign directed at Polish farmers and Jews. After Stepan Bandera resettled in German‑occupied Kraków, his relationship with the Nazis deepened. In spring 1941, Bandera held meetings with the heads of Germany's intelligence, regarding the formation of the "Nachtigall" and "Roland" Battalions. During this time, the OUN received 2.5 million Reichsmarks for subversive activities inside the Soviet Union.
Stepan Bandera assured the Germans that these units, together with small “mobile groups” already infiltrating Soviet territory, would secure German lines of advance as soon as the frontier was crossed. This arrangement positioned his movement as an auxiliary partner in Hitler’s eastern campaign even before the start of Operation Barbarossa, which was the code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Stepan Bandera was also working for Ukrainian independence after the end of the Second World War and the Kremlin wanted his voice silenced. They tried, over the years, to find and kidnap him into the Soviet Union. When Soviet patience finally ran out, the infamous KGB – the intelligence agency of the Soviet Union sent the young Ukrainian Bohdan Stashynsky to execute Bandera. The KGB trained Stashynsky to use a spray gun that fired a jet of poison gas from a crushed cyanide capsule.

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