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Kiev, Ukraine Russian propagandists haveargued all along that Ukraine's Maidan revolution, which toppled an elected pro-Moscow president a year ago, was motivated by ultra-nationalist aspirations, not pro-democracy ones.

Now, a cluster of sweeping new laws is helping to prove their point.

Some here call the legislation, which bans communist symbols and elevate controversial anti-Soviet fighters to "national hero" status, long overdue. But it also risks deepening the rifts in Ukrainian society at a time when chances for reconciliation between the nationalistic west and the more Russified east are slipping away.

One of the laws passed late last week by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's unicameral parliament, will ban communist and Nazi ideologies along with all of their emblems, including the five-pointed red star, crimson flag, and hammer-and-sickle. It even mandates local authorities across Ukraine to pull down Soviet-era monuments and change street names that honored communist-era heroes.

Oleksandr Klimenko, minister of revenue in the government of former President Viktor Yanukovych, argued on his Facebook page that even that step could cost the near-bankrupt Kiev government hundreds of millions of dollars it doesn't have.

"There are 459 cities in Ukraine, and each has some 30 streets named after Soviet-era figures," he writes. "It's not so simple to change names. Everyone who lives or works on those streets has to renew all their documents, records need to be revised, maps redrawn. All this to comply with a law passed out of quasi-patriotic feelings that nobody needs?"

Ukraine's Communist Party, which no longer holds seats in the Rada but still has 112 members of regional legislatures, would seem to be effectively banned by the law, given its ideology and use of communist symbols.Party representatives were not answering phones in Kiev Monday. But party leader Pyotr Simonenko, who was detained and interrogated for 11 hours by Ukrainian security services last week, told Russian media that "[these laws] only lead to a greater split in the society and continuation of war."

A second law, potentially more polarizing, grants recognition to a broad group of "fighters for Ukrainian independence" in the 20th century, including armed groups who fought against Soviet forces in World War II. However, historians say that many of the honored fighters, such asStepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, are tainted by their collaboration with the Nazis and participation in the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Poles during the war.

About 200 members of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian Insurgent Army are still alive. The new law would provide pensions and benefits, as well as recognition of their role as "independence fighters."

And whilethose fighters may be perceived as heroes in western Ukraine, the majority in the country's east whose grandfathers served in the Soviet Red Army have learned to view them as enemies.

Original post:
Do Ukraine's new nationalist laws justify Kremlin's criticism? (+video)