Lebedʹ, Mykola, 1910-1998

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. He died in 1998.