Mykola Lebed
| Mykola Lebed | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 11, 1909 Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire |
| Died | July 18, 1998 (aged 89) Pittsburgh, PA, United States |
| Nationality | Ukrainian |
| Other names | Maksym Ruban, Marko or Yevhen Skyrba |
| Occupation | Politician |
Mykola Lebed (Ukrainian: Микола Лебідь; January 11, 1909 – July 18, 1998), also known as Maksym Ruban, Marko or Yevhen Skyrba, was a Ukrainian political activist, Ukrainian nationalist, and guerrilla fighter. He was among those tried, convicted, and imprisoned for the murder of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw 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. As leader of OUN-B he is responsible for the genocide of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
In 1949 he emigrated to the United States and lived in New York. Through Prolog Research Corporation, his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded organization, he gathered intelligence on the Soviet Union as late as into the late 1960s. The CIA project name for the operation was AERODYNAMIC. In 1991, the CIA still considered him a valuable asset. Federal investigators would consider Lebed a possible war criminal but did not pursue prosecution. He died in 1998.
Born in Novi Strilyscha, a small town in Galicia, nowadays western part of Ukraine (at the time, Austria–Hungary), Lebed completed his studies in Lviv which during the Interbellum was part of the Second Polish Republic. In 1930-32 he took an active part in setting up youth groups of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the area around Lviv. From 1932-34 he directed communications between the Ukrainian Executive and the Foreign Command of the OUN.
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