![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Edmonton-261020.avif\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe Roman Shukhevych sculpture located near the Ukrainian Youth Association in Edmonton, on August 23, 2023, in Edmonton, Alberta.(Artur Widak\/NurPhoto)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Monday\u2019s guilty plea was an anticlimactic not-quite-end to a case that appeared to be run-of-the-mill vandalism but was so culturally charged that it drew the attention of everyone from the Premier of Alberta to Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto. <\/p>\n
In 2021, Kinney broke the news story that someone had spray-painted \u201cActual Nazi\u201d on a bust erected to honor WWII military commander and Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych and then painted \u201cNazi Monument\u201d and \u201c14th Waffen SS\u201d on a memorial to the SS Galizien, a Ukrainian military unit that was part of the Nazi Party\u2019s military wing.<\/p>\n
According to court documents, Kinney was caught on a security camera spray-painting the Shukhevych monument shortly after midnight on Aug. 10, 2021, and caught again eight hours later photographing his handiwork. He then sent an email to the staff of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, where the monument was located, explaining that Progress Report had received photos of the defaced monument. The brief email concluded with \u201cDo you have any statement or information on this matter? Was Roman Shukhevych a Nazi or Nazi collaborator? Our deadline is 3:15 pm. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kinney initially pleaded not guilty to one count each of criminal mischief and mischief relating to a war memorial. He suggested he\u2019d been targeted because he was critical of the Edmonton Police Service and alleged that they were trying to silence him. <\/p>\n
He is due to be sentenced Jan. 25, 2027, at which time the crown prosecutor is expected to drop the more serious charge of defacing a war memorial, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Neither Kinney nor his defense attorney, Tom Engel, would comment after the court appearance. However, the board of Progress Report issued a statement decrying its former employee\u2019s actions, calling committing a crime and reporting that somebody else did it \u201ca cardinal breach of journalistic ethics and not acceptable behavior within any media organization. Mr. Kinney has always maintained his innocence in this matter and we trusted him; today\u2019s news was an unpleasant surprise for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the case exposed deep divisions in the Ukrainian diaspora about the role that Ukraine played in the Holocaust. <\/p>\n
Shukhevych was a leader in both the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed force, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). He was also an officer in a Third Reich auxiliary battalion. During World War II, he commanded troops that murdered Jews, Polish civilians, other national minorities, communists and his countrymen from Ukraine. And he helped marshal the fight for Ukrainian independence from the Soviets.<\/p>\n
The monument to the SS Galizien is located at St. Michael\u2019s Cemetery, less than two miles from the complex housing the Shukhevych bust. Among the unit\u2019s members was Yaroslav Hunka, who, at age 98, received two standing ovations for his service in WWII and fighting for Ukrainian independence when he appeared in the House of Commons alongside visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in September 2023. <\/p>\n
Nobody in Parliament, it seemed, was aware of Hunka\u2019s Nazi past. When the news became public, the incident became a national embarrassment. At least temporarily, the country was forced to examine how it dealt with WWII war criminals.<\/p>\n
In Edmonton, however, the blunder appeared to have no impact on Kinney\u2019s case. For his alleged vandalism to the SS Galizien monument, he had been charged not with simple mischief, but with vandalizing a war monument. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not consider a statue honoring a Nazi to be a war monument,\u201d says Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto. \u201cWhen we talk about veterans\u2019 monuments, we are talking about Canada\u2019s veterans. We are not talking about Nazi veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirzner-Roberts\u2019 organization, B\u2019nai Brith Canada and the Jewish Federation of Edmonton, as well as local politicians and academics, have been asking for years for the monuments to be removed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that in the case of the Shukhevych monument, you shouldn\u2019t put up monuments to people responsible for mass murder,\u201d says John-Paul Himka, a University of Alberta professor emeritus of history, whose 2021 book \u201cUkrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust\u201d examines the role that the OUN and UPA had in destroying Ukraine\u2019s Jewish population during WWII. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs for the Waffen-SS memorial, Austria has also been trying to get rid of their Waffen-SS memorials and it\u2019s an issue around the world, really, how much you want to put up memorials to SS men or to people who collaborated with the Nazi state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Less than six months after the Hunka debacle in Parliament, the monument to the SS Galizien at the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, was permanently removed. Himka doesn\u2019t see anything like that happening in Edmonton, a city with the largest population of people with Ukrainian descent in a country with one of the largest populations of people with Ukrainian descent outside of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe diaspora community doesn\u2019t want to hear about this,\u201d he says. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to confront the history, and nobody is telling them otherwise really.\u201d<\/p>\n
The courtroom, though, did host one such confrontation. At the conclusion of Kinney\u2019s appearance, two women who appeared to be in their 40s and who had spent the half-hour proceedings knitting, engaged in a conversation with two men who appeared to be at least twice their age and were sitting across the aisle. <\/p>\n
The discussion started innocently enough, with inquiries as to what brought each of them to the courtroom. When the women said that Shukhevych was a Nazi who had killed thousands of innocent people, the temperature heated up. <\/p>\n
When the women insisted, the men all but rolled their eyes. \u201cThat\u2019s Russian propaganda,\u201d they scoffed, then got up and marched together out of the courtroom.<\/p>\n