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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
On Tuesday, 18 August, a ceremony of reburial of the first head of the OUN, Yevhen Konovalets, took place at the National Military Memorial Cemetery in Kyiv region.
This was reported by hromadske.
How did the reburial go?
Present at the procession were President Volodymyr Zelensky, Prime Minister Serhiy Koretsky, Head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Budanov and his deputy Iryna Vereshchuk.
Also at the event were Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk and his deputy Olena Kondratyuk, head of the Ministry for Veterans Affairs Vitaliy Kim, Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Andriy Sibiga, Acting Minister of Defence Yevhenii Khmara, and Minister of Internal Affairs Ivan Vyhivskyi.
With a speech during the ceremony, the head of state spoke. Volodymyr Zelensky expressed gratitude to all patriots who guarded Konovalets’s memory for decades, and to those for whom "the return of Colonel Konovalets to Ukraine was a matter of honor."
Konovalets knew that a strong state needs a strong army, and he was the organizer of the Ukrainian military force, the valor of which continues to inspire all our soldiers. Unfortunately, at that time Ukraine could not consolidate, there was a lack of unity, a lack of wisdom among political leaders of that era, a lack of ability to build real ties with the world,
– Zelensky stated.
He added that the time has now come for Ukraine, and the restoration of independence gave the state the ability to protect its right to remain itself.
"No one will remove the blue-and-yellow flags from Kyiv, and only our state, and only Ukraine, will choose its national path," the president said.
Reburial of Yevhen Konovalets: watch the video by hromadske
The first head of the OUN, Yevhen Konovalets, was reburied at the National Military Memorial Cemetery.
Video: Denys Bulavin / hromadske pic.twitter.com/sSNbyxn0lx
— hromadske (@HromadskeUA) August 18, 2026
At the same time, the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Oleksandr Alfiorov, spoke about the results of computer tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and other studies conducted on the remains of Colonel Yevhen Konovalets.
He noted that after the remains were brought back to Kyiv, an MRI was performed, which confirmed the presence of a skeleton and other remains.
Alfiorov reminded that Konovalets died as a result of an explosion organized by a Russian agent. He also noted that the first head of the OUN was buried in a wooden coffin, inside which a metal coffin with a small window was placed.
Yes, Colonel 88 rests for years at the local cemetery "Crosswijk" in the Netherlands. Exhumation of Yevhen Konovalets’s remains was carried out on 11 August in Rotterdam, where he was buried after being killed by Pavel Sudoplatov in 1938 year. 13 August the remains of the colonel were solemnly welcomed in Ukraine with state and military honors. And 16 August a farewell ceremony with Konovalets took place in the Patriarchal Cathedral in Kyiv.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Євгена Коновальця перепоховали на Національному меморіальному кладовищі". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Channel 24.
