Duncan Kinney, executive director of Progress Alberta and editor of The Progress Report, has pleaded guilty to one count of mischief over the 2021 vandalism of a statue at a Ukrainian community centre in north Edmonton.
Kinney admitted he spray-painted the words “Actual Nazi” in red on a bronze bust of Roman Shukhevych outside the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, according to Edmonton Journal reporter Jonny Wakefield, who was in court. Kinney also admitted he then wrote an article about the vandalism and presented someone else as responsible, Wakefield reported.
That article ran on The Progress Report on August 10, 2021, the same day as the vandalism. It said the graffiti was the work of “an unknown person or persons.”
Edmonton Police Service’s hate crimes unit charged Kinney with mischief under $5,000 in October 2022. He pleaded not guilty and fought the charge for about four years.
At the time, Kinney was in a public dispute with Edmonton police, who revoked his media accreditation in March 2022. He wrote that police were trying to silence The Progress Report.
Shukhevych’s wartime record is disputed. He served as an officer in a Ukrainian battalion under German command and later commanded the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose forces massacred thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of Poles. B’nai Brith Canada and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center have called for the bust’s removal. The complex has said the war-crimes evidence against him was manufactured by the KGB.
None of that was before the court. The plea concerns who painted the statue, and who then reported the vandalism as news without saying so.
On the same night in 2021, a monument to the 14th Waffen SS Division at St. Michael’s Cemetery was also painted red.
The Progress Report has not issued a correction to the 2021 article.
