Court cancels renaming capital’s Moscow Avenue to Bandera Avenue

The Kyiv District Administrative Court has overturned the Kyiv City Council’s decision to rename Moscow Avenue to Stepan Bandera Avenue in Kyiv.

The decision is a legal victory for the nonprofit Public Control and Order, according to the court’s ruling, published on Jan. 28.

The Kyiv City Council had renamed Moscow Avenue after late Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in 2016 as part of the decommunization process, which criminalized using communist symbols like Lenin statues and Soviet-style street names.

According to the court decision, renaming Moscow Avenue into Bandera Avenue violated terms established by the decommunization law, passed by parliament in 2015.

Public Control and Order claims the law doesn’t include the names of famous Imperial Russia-era generals Kutuzov and Suvorov, as well as Moscow, the name of the Russian capital.

The Kyiv City Council plans to appeal the decision of the Kyiv District Administrative Court, which hasn’t yet come into force. For now, avenue still retains Bandera’s name.

The court has also overturned the decision to rename Suvorova Street to Mykhailo Omelyanovich-Pavlenko Street; Kutuzov Street to General Almazov Street; Kutuzov Lane to Yevhen Gutsal Lane; and Bauman Street to Janusz Korczak Street.

This is not the first time that a court in Ukraine tried to cancel the renaming of Bandera Avenue. Last year, the Kyiv District Administrative Court also overturned the decision on renaming two avenues in honor of the Ukrainian nationalists Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. However, the Court of Appeal overturned this ruling.