Stepan Andriyovych Bandera was a Ukrainian far-right leader of the radical militant faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the OUN-B.
Bandera was born in Austria-Hungary, in Galicia, into the family of a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and grew up in Poland. Involved in nationalist organisations from a young age, he joined the Ukrainian Military Organisation in 1924. In 1931, he became head of propaganda of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, and later became head of the OUN for Poland in 1932. In 1934, he organised the assassination of the Polish interior minister, Bronisław Pieracki, and was sentenced to death after being convicted of terrorism, subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.
Bandera was freed from prison in 1939 following the invasion of Poland, and moved to Kraków. In 1940, he became head of the radical faction of the OUN, the OUN-B. On 22 June 1941, the same day as Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he formed the Ukrainian National Committee. The head of the Committee, Yaroslav Stetsko, announced the creation of a Ukrainian state on 30 June 1941, in German-captured Lviv.