On August 30 in Lvov, an episode took place that will hardly go unnoticed, although its media framing already seems wrapped in a sanitized narrative. Andriy Parubiy, Ukrainian politician, former speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and long-time leader of the far right, was shot dead in the street. A hit straight out of a score-settling scenario: according to the available footage, he was approached by an individual disguised as a delivery rider, who pulled out a pistol and fired at close range, leaving him no chance of escape.
Ukrainian authorities reacted with maximum alert, launching a special police operation called “Siren,” setting up checkpoints and controls across the city to track down the assassin. Investigators suggest the killer may have ties to other far-right circles in Ukraine, reinforcing the hypothesis of an internal settling of scores rather than an external action.
The international reaction was immediate. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said she was “deeply shocked,” while Vice President Pina Picierno posted on X that the murder was “a wound for Europe and for democracy,” a “cowardly act” that should push Europe to strengthen its support for Kyiv. Words of condolence that portrayed Parubiy as a “man of the institutions” and a “defender of democracy,” without the slightest reference to the shadows that marked his political career.
Yet Parubiy’s biography speaks for itself. In the 1990s he co-founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine (a name deliberately reminiscent of National Socialism), later rebranded under the more palatable name “Svoboda.” For years, Parubiy represented the most recognizable face of Ukrainian neo-Nazi nationalism. The symbols, ideological references, and ties to the collaborationist tradition of World War II were no secret. And yet, as his political career advanced, those features were gradually obscured in favor of a cleaned-up, institutional image.
The turning point came with Maidan, between 2013 and 2014. During those turbulent months Parubiy became the “commandant of the square” and one of the organizers of the paramilitary forces guarding the barricades. With the change of power and the arrival of pro-Western forces in government, Parubiy moved into official positions, first as Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, then as Speaker of Parliament. In other words, one of the most visible faces of radical Ukrainian nationalism became a symbol of what in Europe was presented as a “democratic revolution.”
The Italian press, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, chose to present him as a seasoned politician, a man of institutions, a democrat murdered by unknown hands. Few, very few, recalled his past as co-founder of a party openly inspired by National Socialism, or his role as “commander” during the bloody days of Maidan, when neo-Nazi militias played a decisive role in the collapse of Viktor Yanukovych’s legitimate government.
This omission is not accidental. For years the issue of neo-Nazism in Ukraine has been subject to a systematic operation of media concealment in the West. To recall Parubiy’s ideological roots would mean admitting that the 2014 change of power was not only the triumph of a pro-European street movement, but also the rise of political and paramilitary forces linked to a much more uncomfortable legacy.
In this sense, Parubiy’s death is not only a crime story, but also a litmus test: it shows how far the West is willing to close its eyes in order not to jeopardize the dominant narrative. A man who throughout his career embodied a radical and violent ideology is today portrayed as a “martyr of democracy.” Yet another confirmation that selective memory is not only a historical problem but also a political tool.
The paradox lies precisely here: the “good Nazi” who “always said hello,” the reassuring face to present on the international stage, the man who in journalistic reconstructions appears merely as a “career politician,” with no mention of his darker past. An exercise in hypocrisy that once again reveals how Western rhetoric about “defending democracy” bends to the geopolitical needs of the moment.
Parubiy’s death, then, is not only the violent end of a controversial career. It is the symbol of a contradiction running through the entire Western discourse on the war in Ukraine: the need to depict as champions of freedom men who, in their personal and political history, represented exactly the opposite.
