Mykola Lebed

Mykola Kyrylovych Lebed (January 11, 1909 – July 18, 1998, also spelled Lebid;; also known as Maksym Ruban, Marko, or Yevhen Skyrba) was a Ukrainian nationalist political activist and guerrilla fighter. He was among those tried, convicted, and imprisoned for the murder of Polish interior minister Bronisław Pieracki in 1934. The court sentenced him to death, but the state commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. He escaped when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. He was a leader of the faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) led by Stepan Bandera, OUN-B, which was responsible for the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

From 1949, Lebed lived in the United States. The CIA worked closely with him, persuading British intelligence to support him over Bandera. He became increasingly critical of the ethno-nationalist and antisemitic ideology of the OUN. The CIA protected him from investigation for his war-time activities. During the Warsaw Process (1934–36) he was given the death penalty which was later commuted to life imprisonment.

World War II Lebed escaped in September 1939 while being evacuated from the Bereza Kartuska Prison due to the threatening Soviet invasion.

From November 1939 through March 1940 he served as the chief of the school of espionage and sabotage founded by the Abwehr in Zakopane.

In 1940, during the internal conflict that erupted within the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) he supported Stepan Bandera, and, in 1941, became his assistant.

In June 1941, he was minister security in the short-lived Ukrainian government established in Lwow.

Lebed was the organizer and leader of three OUN(b) conferences in Ukraine (in September 1941, April 1942, and February 1943). According to historian Ryszard Torzecki, from 1942 to 1944 he negotiated with the Polish Home Army on a joint fight against the Nazis. Polish historian, Grzegorz Motyka in turn, notes that at the Third Great Congress, Lebed – along with Mykhailo Stepanyak – criticized the Volyn rebels for “bandit actions” against the Polish civilians .

In 1944 he became one of the founders of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR) and the general Secretary of International Policies of the UHVR. In 1944, representing the UHVR, he traveled to the West where he contacted various Western governments.