Ukrainian anti-Soviet armed resistance

Ukrainian anti-Soviet armed resistance
Part of World War II
Ukrainian Insurgent Army troops, 1947
Date August 1941 - April 1960 Location Western Ukraine (Galicia, Volyn, Polissya), Transcarpathia, Northern Bukovina, Podillya, Western Belarus Result The defeat of the UPA, the defeat of the militant nationalist movement
Belligerents
Ukrainian Insurgent Army • Self-defense Kushch Units (to 1946) • UPA South (to 1946) • UPA North (to 1951) • UPA West (to 1949) • Sluzhba Bezpeky (to 1951) Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Melnyk) (to September 1944) • Bukovinian Ukrainian Self-Defense Army (1944)	USSR • Soviet partisans (1944) • Destruction battalions Polish People's Republic (from 1945) Third Czechoslovak Republic (from 1945)
Commanders and leaders
Dmytro Klyachkivsky † Roman Shukhevych † Mykola Lebed Vasyl Sydor † Olexandr Hasyn † Vasyl Kuk   Kyrylo Osmak   Ivan Lytvynchuk † Olexandr Lutskyi † Vasyl Halasa   Mykola Arsenych † Omelyan Hrabets † Mykola Tverdokhlib † Vasyl Levkovych   Vyroslav Onyshkevych † Ivan Butkovskyi Petro "Aeneas" Oliynyk † Ostap Lynda † Viktor Kharkiv   Yakiv Chorniy † Mykola Kapustiansky Ivan Kedulych Vasyl Shumka	Joseph Stalin Lavrentiy Beria Nikita Khrushchev Vsevolod Merkulov Viktor Abakumov Ivan Serov Ryasnoy Vasil Stepanovich Nikolai Vatutin † Pavel Sudoplatov Savchenko Sergey Romanovich Timofei Strokach Pavlo Meshyk Bolesław Bierut Karol Świerczewski † Zygmunt Berling Edvard Beneš
Strength
The maximum number: more than 400,000 guerrillas, underground fighters and agents 1942-1956
Casualties and losses
UPA: more than 155,000 killed 130-200,000 arrested	Soviet Union: 8,340 State Security officers and servicemen killed According to other data: 25,000 State Security officers and servicemen killed; 30,000 Soviet officials killed

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The Ukrainian anti-Soviet armed resistance was an armed struggle waged by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) against Soviet rule from 1941 to 1960 in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, eastern voivodeships of Poland, and southwestern regions of the Byelorussian SSR.

The first armed actions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army started against the defeated remnants of the Red Army and red partisans in 20 August 1941. This army represented Government of the Ukrainian People's Republic in exile.

With the restoration of Soviet rule of Ukraine, the UPA in 1944 conducted large-scale hostilities against the government, and then, due to heavy losses, gradually turned to guerrilla warfare. From 1944 to 1956, about 155,000 insurgents were killed by Soviet troops and state security agencies, including key Ukrainian Insurgent Army leaders: Roman Shukhevych, Dmytro Klyachkivsky, Oleksandr Lutsky, Petro Oliynyk, and others. The interior agencies of the Soviet Union (NKVD until 1946, MVD starting in 1946) formed the basis of the forces that fought against the Ukrainian national liberation movement in the 1940s and 1950s. They used some fighter battalions from the local population that cooperated with the Communists.

In 1956 the Soviet troops ultimately defeated the UPA.

Background

See also: Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Population transfer in the Soviet Union, and Act of restoration of the Ukrainian state

UPA officers

Taras Bulba-Borovets, leader of Ukrainian Insurgent Army

The first troops that fought remnants of the Red Army and soviet partisans was Ukrainian Insurgent Army under command of Taras Bulba-Borovets. This army was loyal to Government of the Ukrainian People's Republic in exile. On June 20, 1940, by order of the President of the Ukrainian People's Republic in exile Andriy Livytsky, he was to form and lead the Ukrainian Insurgent Army "Poliska Sich".

Another Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) loyal to Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists emerged in the winter of 1942-43. This troops didn't support Ukrainian People's Republic. Conflict between two insurgent armies led to renaming one of them into Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army on 20 July 1943. Later name Ukrainian Insurgent Army was used by supporters of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

At first it fought against Soviet partisans, who the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) called Red partisans and described as agents of "Stalin and Sikorsky" and "the vanguard of Moscow imperialism." In Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, organizational and underground movement advances for Soviet partisans were particularly difficult due to the rapid occupation of the territory of Western Ukraine by Nazi forces. The Russian occupation of 1939-1941 was terrible for local Ukrainians, so Communists could not gain public support. Soviet units were going to destroy UPA units and create their own network of agents in the nationalist underground to dismantle it from within.

In the autumn and winter of 1943, Soviet state security agencies had to deal with nationalist organizations in eastern Ukraine. Liquidated underground groups that emerged during the German occupation in Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Poltava, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, and Stalin (now Donetsk) oblasts were identified. In total, according to State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), as a result of the sale of intelligence materials, 26 such groups with 226 participants were eliminated.

At the beginning of 1944, the Red Army came to the UPA's areas of activity. In January–February 1944, it occupied a large part of Volhynia. The troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, with the forces of the 13th and 60th armies, carried out the Rivne-Lutsk offensive, capturing these two regional centers on February 2. In the occupied territories, the Soviet authorities seized food, conscripted local Ukrainians en masse into the Red Army, and after a few days of training threw them on the front. The majority of party and state cadres were foreigners from the USSR, who often behaved like conquerors in a conquered country, and treated the local Ukrainian population with contempt. There were also numerous examples of fraud, theft, and rape committed by Soviet soldiers.^:10 Support grew for the Ukrainian underground.

By July 1943 the UPA had twenty thousand soldiers^:208 and in 1944, it reached a peak membership of 25-30 thousand guerrillas. To this must be added the militias of the Sluzhba Bezpeky, the OUN Security Council, and those belonging only to the OUN civic network, which existed in most Ukrainian towns and villages.

The approach of the Red Army forced UPA's to develop further strategy and tactics of war with occupiers. The command decided to cross the front line through the fighting Soviet order and exit to their rear areas. The UPA South group was ordered to leave the Vinnytsia and Kamianets-Podilskyi regions, where there were few forests, and retreat to Volhynia together with two parts of the UPA East army group. In the second half of January 1944, units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army crossed the front in the Volhynia forest belt along the Sluch and Horyn rivers.

At the very beginning of 1944, the UPA advocated that some Ukrainians should not avoid a mobilization in the Red Army. But they would join it in order to disintegrate from within. However, as early as March 1944, the UPA urged young people to evade conscription into the Red Army.

The III Extraordinary Congress of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), decided to send UPA troops on raids deep into the USSR: eastern Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucasus, raising nations to revolt against the USSR. Although the raids ended in complete failure, the Ukrainians did not to give up. They saw a chance for success at the beginning of World War II and considered Britain and the United States allies. Their will to fight was strengthened by the widespread belief that the Soviet government would kill or, at best deport, everyone in Western Ukraine. The OUN leadership and the UPA command were convinced that the Russians were prepared to destroy all Ukrainians, basing this on the experience of the Great Famine of the 1930s, when five million people or more Soviet citizens starved to death between 1931 and 1934, 3.9 million of them Ukrainian. They believed that it was better to die in battle than to passively allow themselves to be killed. OUN members tried to attract not only Ukrainians to the UPA but also members of other nationalities, especially military specialists from the encirclement and prisoners of war. Although there were national divisions in the UPA, this attempt also failed.

Another invention of the OUN-UPA was underground hideouts. The system of secret shelters began to be built just in anticipation of the arrival of Soviet troops. There were different types of hiding places: warehouses, radio stations, printing houses, and barracks. They were built on the principle of dugouts with the difference that the entrance was masked. As a rule, the entrance to the hiding place was a stump or a box with earth in which a young tree was planted. Ventilation was removed through the trees. There were underground bunkers in the village. They disguised the entrance to the shelter under piles of garbage, haystacks, wells, kennels, and even graves. A total of 10,000 hideouts were built during the UPA's existence.

UPA from 1941 to 1943

Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army defeated a Soviet force and capture Olevsk on 20 August 1941. In November 1941, the Nazis, with the help of the army and police, established their administrative control over the territory. UPA units were partially disarmed and disbanded, and partially relocated illegally. However, even after that, the power of the occupation administration over the territory of Polissya was mostly limited to cities, railway stations and roads. The countryside turned into an arena of brutal confrontation between several guerrillas armies.

During the autumn and winter of 1942, Borovets negotiated with Soviet partisans and reached a "non-aggression" agreement, which lasted until February 1943. The maximum number of this UPA units was approximately 3-4 thousand.

Clashes of the Red Army with the UPA (early 1944)

After the arrival of the Red Army, Ukrainian guerrilla units took action to hamper the emergence of communist local occupation authorities. Most of the open clashes ended in serious setbacks for the relatively poorly prepared UPA units. Therefore, to avoid fighting with regular troops, UPA units attacked mobilization points, liaison offices, and quartermasters.

The UPA leadership instructed its units to hold a welcome reception for the Red Army occupying the cities and villages of Western Ukraine, to lull their vigilance, and then to strike unexpected blows at their headquarters, bases, and some small units to replenish their stocks of weapons and products.

According to the Rivne Regional Committee of the party, in January–February 1944 there were 56 UPA detachments, numbering from 100 to 600 people each. The total number was 10,600 fighters. In January–February 1944, Soviet sources in the Rivne region recorded 154 attacks on small units and individual soldiers, which killed 439 Red Army soldiers. For example, on the night of January 9 in the Berezansky district of the Rivne region in the village of Belocsuvka, OUN killed 13 Red Army soldiers, in the village of Mokvyn (55 km. from Rivne) and poisoned 30 Red Army members of the 181st Rifle Division. On January 21, 1944, in the village of Kopytovo, Korets District, Rivne Region, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fired on a group of soldiers of the 140th Rifle Division of the 60th Army, killing one Red Army soldier. On January 27, in the forest near the village of Huta-Stepanska, a UPA detachment of up to 100 people attacked a group of Red Army men numbering 15 people. A battle ensued, in which 13 Red Army soldiers were killed. On the night of February 6–7, 1944, six radio operators and a non-commissioned officer were killed in the Sarny district.

From January to March 5, 1944, the UPA, according to Soviet sources, attacked the district centers of the Rivne region seven times, killing 109 Soviet activists. They attacked, in particular, Derazhno, Tuchyn, Volodymyrets, Morochne, Vysotsk.

On February 12, 1944, the first appeal of the Soviet leadership to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was published, calling for them to voluntarily come out of the underground and lay down their arms. At the same time, large-scale stripping operations began. Persons suspected of aiding the underground were deported to the east of the USSR. The bodies of those killed were often put on display to intimidate others. For the same purpose, open trials and public executions of captured members of the OUN-B and UPA were organized, to which even schoolchildren were expelled.

On February 29, 1944, a UPA detachment attacked a convoy of General Mykola Vatutin, commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, leaving the headquarters of the Thirteenth Army, as a result of which the general was seriously wounded and died a month later in a Kyiv hospital. According to the most common version, near the village of Mylyatyn in the Ostroh district, a column was fired upon by a UPA detachment under the command of Petro "Aeneas" Oliynyk.

The Soviet government responded to Vatutin's assassination just as harshly. The 1st Ukrainian Front allocated one cavalry division, reinforced by 20 armored vehicles and eight tanks to fight the insurgents in March of that year. On the one hand, it was an act of revenge, and on the other - a purely practical measure: the army had to clear the anti-Soviet guerrillas of their rear and communications. A battalion garrison was stationed in each district, and NKVD Internal Troops regiments were stationed in regional centers. In total, more than 30,000 NKVD soldiers were sent to fight the UPA. Some units arrived in Ukraine directly from Chechnya and Kalmykia, where deportations had just ended. In some villages, subordinate NKVD Destruction battalions were created. Ten armored trains supported by amphibious groups arrived to protect the railways.

In March 1944, the Soviets recorded 270 attacks on Red Army soldiers. In April 1944, the insurgents' actions changed dramatically. The troops of the First Ukrainian Front were preparing for an offensive against the Nazi invaders. This did not suit the OUN leadership, and it ordered a series of deep raids on the rear of the Red Army. In the areas north of the Kovel-Rivne-Shepetivka railway line, open-armed clashes took place, during which UPA units suffered significant losses.

On March 28, Nikita Khrushchev was told that 1,129 OUN and UPA members had been killed in 65 operations, and by April 7, that number had risen to 2,600 killed and 3,256 taken prisoner. The actual losses amounted to 112 killed and 90 wounded.

One of the biggest battles of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army with regular units of the Red Army, NKVD, and Smersh took place on April 21–25, 1944 in the Gurbensky forests of the Mizotsky district at the junction of the Rivne, Ternopil, and Kamyanets-Podilsky regions. Four to five thousand UPA soldiers belonging to the UPA-South military district were concentrated here and became the basis for the deployment of the UPA-East. The enemy forces numbered up to 30,000 NKVD, supported by artillery and tanks. According to a report from Lavrentiy Beria to the USSR State Defense Committee, 26 battles and skirmishes between the NKVD and nationalists took place between April 21 and 27, 1944, in which 1,570 OUN and UPA members were killed and 1570 captured. The Russians claimed their causalities were eleven killed and 46 wounded. Equipment was also taken, including a U-2 aircraft, seven guns, and 15 mortars. Ostap, a political officer at the Bohun UPA-North, who was the official report on the battle of Gurba, testified during interrogation that he was informed that Ukrainian losses were 200 and those of the Russians 2,000. Ukrainian insurgents retreated. The Soviet command failed to defeat the main UPA forces in the south of the Rivne region and the north of the Ternopil region.

According to the Smersh counterintelligence department, in April and May 10, 530 OUN and UPA members were killed in 545 operations.

On the morning of May 12, 1944, a detachment of Ukrainian insurgents attacked Anton Odukha's partisan detachment in the village of Stryhany and hoped to seize the partisan hospital and destroy the partisan command. A battle ensued in which the soldiers were forced to retreat, and then, when reinforcements arrived, the surrounding area was cleared extremely hard. The prisoners were shot.

On June 10, 1944, near the village of Mykulyntsi in the Vinnytsia region, a UPA colonel, organizer, and commander of the UPA-South group, Omelyan Batko Grabets, was killed in a battle with the Chekists of the 189th, 203rd, and 209th battalions of the NKVD internal troops. In that battle, according to the Bolsheviks, 14 insurgents were killed and two were taken prisoner.

According to Soviet data, in the first half of 1944, the NKVD killed 16,338, captured 15,991 insurgents, appeared with 2549 convicts. Also, 3676 members of the OUN underground and the UPA were arrested. In addition, 27,361 people who had evaded conscription were detained. The casualties among the NKVD personnel were as follows. Killed: 37 NKVD officers, 655 officers and soldiers of the NKVD and Red Army troops, and 112 missing. As of July 1, 1944, 80 active UPA detachments with 6,749 participants were included in the front line (which included the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR captured by the Red Army).

On July 19, 1944, the text of the oath of a soldier of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was introduced, approved by the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, and introduced by order of the military headquarters of the UPA.

Departure of the Nazis (late 1944)

In July 1944, during an operation to seize western Ukraine, Soviet troops surrounded and defeated eight German divisions of about 60,000 near Brody. Among them were 10,000 soldiers of the SS Halychyna division. About 5,000 managed to escape from the encirclement, but many were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. An estimated 3,000 escaped captivity, many of whom later joined the rebels. At the end of the Lviv-Sandomierz offensive, almost all of Galicia was already in the hands of Soviet troops. On July 27, the Red Army occupied Lviv, Stanislav, and Przemyśl, and on August 6, Drohobych and Boryslav. Thus, the Germans lost almost all of Ukraine, except for the mountain range and Transcarpathia. At that time, only a small part of the UPA was on the German side of the front, in the Carpathians.

In August 1944, after the Red Army entered Hungary, Romania, and Poland, the active actions of the UPA resumed. In addition to ambushes on highways, shelling and killing individual servicemen, attacks on military depots, and sabotage of communications, the OUN-UPA's actions also aimed to disrupt food supplies to the Red Army. Some military units were also attacked. Thus, on August 18, 1944, the 1st Communications Battalion of the 1331st Rifle Regiment, which was marching to the front, was ambushed on the road near Pidhaitsi in the Ternopil region. Most of the soldiers and officers were killed, only 11 survived.

Anti-insurgency operations continued in the summer of 1944. On July 30, 1944, military groups of 207 and 208 separate infantry battalions discovered and destroyed the UPA-North headquarters headed by Chief of Staff Leonid Stupnytsky while combing the Dermansky Forest in the Rivne region. As a result of the battle, 70 (mostly the leadership and their guards) were killed and 73 insurgents were captured. In August 1944, 220 military operations were conducted in the Lviv region alone, as a result of which more than 5,000 members of the OUN-UPA were killed. During the Soviet operation of the NKVD and the Fourth Ukrainian Front in the Drohobych area from August 18 to September 9, 1,171 were killed and 1,180 "Bandera supporters" were taken prisoner, and 6,000 people who evaded mobilization were detained. Between January 10 and February 23, 1945, about 26,000 insurgents were captured and 11,000 killed.

In the autumn of 1944, the issue of coordinating the actions of Melnyk's armed formations and UPA detachments was finally resolved. "Melnykivtsi" were stationed in the north-western regions of Volhynia and the Carpathians, cooperating with Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army (UNRA) units and the Germans. The OUN(M) divisions in the Carpathian region were headed by S. Kasyan ("Korop"), and the general command was headed by Ivan Kedyulych ("Chubchyk"). During the crossing of the fronts through the Carpathians Melnykivtsi received a proposal from the UPA to unite troops. With the sanction of the commander of the OUN(M) armed forces, General Kapustyansky, such a merger took place, and Ivan Kedyulych was included in the main military headquarter. At the end of summer 1944, auxiliary detachments of the NKVD (Destruction battalions) were actively formed. By November, 203 fighter battalions (27,796 fighters) and 2,997 support groups (27,385 members) had been formed. By the end of 1944, there were 212 fighter battalions with 23,906 fighters and 2,336 support groups with 24,025 members in the western regions of Ukraine.

On October 9, 1944, the NKVD and the NKDB of the USSR issued an order "On measures to combat the OUN underground and eliminate OUN armed gangs in the western regions of the USSR." According to him, the western regions of the USSR were divided into two zones of responsibility - Lviv, Stanislav, Drohobych, and Chernivtsi regions were engaged in the People's Commissar of the NKVD Vasyl Ryasny and the NKDB Serhiy Savchenko, and the head of the border troops of the Ukrainian district Petro Burmak; Rivne, Volyn, and Ternopil regions were managed by Deputy People's Commissars Strokach and Danylo Yesypenko, and the head of the NKVD of the Ukrainian District Mykhailo Marchenkov.

On October 9, 1944, the 9th Rifle Division, one OSB (separate rifle battalion), and one sabre squadron of the 18th Cavalry Regiment were stationed in the Volyn region with a total number of 5,285 men; four rifle brigades with a total number of 8,754 people were stationed in Rivne region. In the Lviv region, there were two rifle brigades of 18 coffee regiments without one squadron and two OSB - a total of 6525 people. In the Ternopil region one rifle brigade, three OSB, and three rifle companies - a total of 3057 people. In Stanislavskaya two OSB and staff units of one brigade - only 1328 people. In Chernivtsi - three OSB two rifle brigades - a total of 1355 people. The total number of Internal Troops of the NKVD in the Western regions of Ukraine was 26,304 people. The first half of 1944 proved that these forces, which were available in Western Ukraine, were not enough to suppress the national liberation movement. Therefore, additional military contingents came from the central and eastern regions of the country. To strengthen the western regions of the USSR by order of October 9, 1944, sent one OSB (517 people), one regiment of convoy troops (1,500 people), and one regiment for the protection of industrial enterprises (1,200 people) and 3 armored trains with a landing of 100 people. 42 border regiments from Turkmenistan and 27 border detachments from the Moldavian SSR moved to the Lviv region.

On October 26, Lavrentiy Beria reported that 688 Chekist military operations had been carried out between October 1 and 15, killing 2,946 and capturing 2,723 insurgents, arresting 42 active OUN members and UPA leaders, and pardoning 465 people. His own losses amounted to 39 killed and 43 wounded.

On November 24, 1944, UPA Major Ostap Linda ("Yarema"), a former commander of the Nachtigall Battalion, was killed in a skirmish with a maneuver group of the NKVD near the village of Krasne in the Stanislavsky Region.

The chief of staff of the UPA-South, Major Mykola Svistun, was killed on December 8, 1944, in the village of Obhiv (now Sosnivka) in the Dubno district of the Rivne region, in a battle with the NKVD.

On December 23, 1944, the commander of the "San" district, the UPA officer Yakiv Chornyi, an accomplice in the assassination attempt on Polish Interior Minister Bronisław Pieracki and a former auxiliary police commander in Przemyśl, was assassinated.

According to the NKVD, from February to December 31, 1944, in Western Ukraine 6,495 operations were conducted in Western Ukraine, in which 57,405 insurgents were killed. In addition 4,744 families (13,320 people) of UPA members and people who had helped them were expelled from the USSR. As a result of operations were seized: one U-2 aircraft, one armored vehicle and one armored personnel carrier, 35 guns, 323 mortars, 321 machine guns and 2,588 machine guns, 211 PTR, 18,600 rifles, 4,200 submachine guns, and other weapons and equipment including 135 walkie-talkies and 18 printing presses. The losses of the Soviet side during the same period killed and hanged - during operations and relevant actions of the UPA were: NKVD-NKGB - 221 (37 missing or captured), officers of the NKVD and the Red Army - 157 (31), soldiers and sergeants 1 880 (402), 904 (127), local residents - 1 953 (248) and fighters of fighter battalions - 40 (230). A total of 2,903 "gang manifestations" by the OUN-UPA were recorded.

UPA and the NKVD in 1944

Battle of Piryatin (August 19, 1944)

Fight of UPA "Siromantsi" sotnia and "Galaida" kurin near Pyriatyn in the Lviv region

After the battle near Yazheva Gora (August 16, 1944) near Maheriv, the "Siromantsi" UPA under the command of Poltava-born Dmytro Karpenko "Yastrub" withdrew to the northeast, to the forest between Pyriatyn (Lviv Raion) and Prystannia (Chervonohrad Raion).

In Pyriatyn, Siromantsi met with the newly formed "Zavoyovnyky" UPA sotnis, which apparently came under Yastrub's command as a newly appointed commander of the tactical unit, on the Lviv-Velyki Mosty road and the Bug River.

The day before, the Mageriv regional department of the NKVD had received intelligence about the presence of three sotnia UPAs near Pyriatyn, armed with light weapons, mortars, anti-aircraft guns and machine guns. There were also Sluzhba Bezpeky with the officer "Gayem" (Dmytro Dumych) and the Self-defense Local Departments. About 700 people total in all formations took part in the Battle of Pyriatyn.

According to the Chronicle of "Siromantsi" sotnia, the enemy lost 80 killed and 62 wounded, and the rebels lost four killed and two wounded. Trophies won: Maxim machine gun, three Degtyarov machine guns, several submachine guns, and rifles. The weapons were given to the newly organized hundred.

Some of the recruits of the "Marny" and "Yarema" came from the surrounding villages and after the battle went home. The remaining sotnia joined the "Galaida" kurin, which on August 22 near Zubeyky (Lviv Raion) fought a major defensive battle with a battalion of the 83rd Regiment of the NKVD Border Troops and the 50th Motorcycle Regiment of the Red Army.

Local historian and writer Ivan Gubka claims in his artistic and documentary works that 18 insurgents were killed in the battle of Pyriatyn: 11 from the SLE and seven from the "Siromantsi" sotnia.

Units of the NKVD's internal and border troops surrounded Pyriatyn again the next day, believing that UPA units were still stationed there. Unable to find them, they launched a terror campaign against the civilian Ukrainian population, burning about 75 yards in the village and surrounding villages, killing six villagers and wounding one. According to locals, 44 people were killed in Pyriatyn and its villages. Instead, according to Soviet data, 60 insurgents were killed or detained in Pyriatyn on August 19–20.

According to Soviet documents, a total of 13,000 servicemen in the rear of the 1st Ukrainian Front, guarding the rear of the 1st Ukrainian Front in Velykomostivsky, Magerivsky, Nemyrivsky, Rava-Ruska, and Yavorivsky districts on August 18–24.

They allegedly killed 929 insurgents and detained 38 insurgents. Trophies were won: three mortars, four large-caliber machine guns, ten hand-held machine guns, 92 submachine guns, 165 rifles, one tachanka, 323 mortar mines, 65 grenades, one armored personnel carrier, nine carts with military equipment; four ammunition depots were blown up and burned, one of which contained up to 30,000 rounds of ammunition and 200 hand grenades. Own losses in the operation: thirteen killed and eight wounded. The extent to which the insurgents' losses are inflated can be seen by comparing the number of killed and captured with the number of trophies won. The armored personnel carrier mentioned among them was apparently the one that the "Siromantsi" had captured from the Bolshevik partisans on August 16 near Yazheva Gora, and then put to use near Magerov. It later appeared in the consolidated information about the trophies of the Soviet government in the fight against the Ukrainian insurgents.

Battle of Zaliznytsia (April 28, 1944)

On April 28, 1944, the 19th Brigade of the Internal Troops of the NKVD began another clearing of the Kremenets forests. By the end of the day, without meeting the enemy, it reached the river Sluch. At five o'clock in the morning on April 29 there were shots from the village of Zaliznytsia, where 18 Red Army soldiers of the 70th Army had been ambushed by the "Doxa" UPA troops of Semyon Kotyk. At 6:15 the NKVD company went to the outskirts of the village, where it was stopped by heavy UPA fire. The guerrillas not only detained the NKVD but soon launched a counterattack. The Soviets found themselves in a difficult situation. At 7:40 am, 155 NKVD officers, led by the commander of the 19th Brigade, Colonel Timofeev, arrived in support. Seeing this, the guerrillas retreated.

The NKVD pursues, which lasted through the evening into the next day. Around 19:30, the Soviets reached the village of Gronne (now Hvizdiv) and attacked the guerrillas stationed in the village. According to the NKVD, many guerrillas were killed in the night battle: 225 killed, 15 wounded and 106 arrested. Most of them were probably civilians. The Soviets also suffered heavy casualties: 23 were killed, including two officers, 30 wounded, five of them officers, and two went missing, including one officer. The UPA estimated Soviet losses 240 killed.

Battle of Karov (August 29–30, 1944)

On August 27, 1944, Soviet intelligence learned that a strong 1,400-strong UPA group was operating in the woods near Kariv-Piddubtsi. The 3rd Battalion of the 2nd Regiment (250 men, Commander Major Korzhenko), separate groups of soldiers of the 88th and 104th Border Troops Divisions (450 border guards in total), and four squadrons of the 29th Guards Regiment were assigned to the operation against the insurgents. The infantry was supported, including an artillery battery and an 82-mm mortar battery. At dawn on August 29, Soviet troops surrounded the forest, taking up positions to attack.

The NKVD were opposed by the "Galaida" kurin under the command of Dmytro Pelyp, which consisted of three sotnia. At 5:30 a.m., the guerrillas were warned by the surrounding residents fleeing the surrounding villages. This allowed them to take up defensive positions in advance.

On August 29, at 7 am, an intense one-and-a-half-hour artillery shelling with cannons, mortars and Katyushas began, which did not however inflict losses on the insurgents. Therefore, the enemy launched an offensive from the east, where there was the "Galaida 2" sotnia. Soon the direction of the main strike was transferred to the center of the insurgent positions, which were occupied by the "Galaida 1" sotnia and the Self-defense Local Departments. At about 7 pm the Russian troops received reinforcements in seven vehicles and began a new offensive. This blow finally broke the line of defense of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, but at dusk the Soviet troops stopped the offensive. Taking the opportunity, the soldiers broke into small groups and broke through the Soviet lines. In the morning the offensive resumed, but only small groups of soldiers remained, which were eliminated. The Soviets estimated the UPA's losses at 625 killed. They themselves had 32 killed and 48 wounded, and one soldier missing. According to the UPA, ten guerrillas were killed and twelve wounded. Two UPA fighters were taken prisoner. They estimated Soviet losses at about 300 killed and 200 wounded.

Battle of Urman village (September 17, 1944)

On September 17, 1944, the 187th Battalion of the NKVD (without the first company) conducted an operation north of Berezhany. The 3rd Company came across a 60-strong UPA detachment and pursued it. Reaching Urmani, the NKVD unexpectedly attacked a strong UPA group (according to the Soviets, numbered up to 800 partisans). The 3rd Company of 35 soldiers was quickly surrounded, cut off from the rest of the battalion. The battle lasted 11 hours, then at dusk the guerrillas retreated to Brzezany. Casualty estimates of this encounter differ. According to the NKVD, the UPA lost 300 men and convoys of weapons and ammunition, while NKVD had 12 killed, 18 wounded, and two missing. According to a UPA report, the NKVD lost 97 people killed and three grenade launchers, as well as other weapons and ammunition.

Battle of Univ (September 30 - October 1, 1944)

The battle between the internal troops of the NKVD and the UPA-West forces of the "Lysonya" military district, which took place from September 30 to October 1, 1944, near the Univ Lavra monastery.

At the end of September 1944, the NKVD command received information that a strong UPA unit was stationed eight kilometers northeast of Peremyshliany. To eliminate it from the area they sent units of the 17th Brigade, numbering about 450 people, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel SG Bromberg. The UPA unit under Dmytro Karpenko ("Yastrub") was stationed in this area. Ukrainian insurgent intelligence, in turn, also reported a concentration of Soviet troops but believed it was simply combing the village.

The battle took place on September 30, 1944, near the Univ Lavra monastery. On the part of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the battle took place in the Siromantsiv hut, Volodymyr Zobkiv's Hundred Self-Defense Hundred, Kosy, and the Dovbny Hundred. The Ukrainian insurgents were opposed by seventeen brigades of NKVD internal troops, numbering up to 1,500 soldiers. Soviet troops used heavy weapons, including reconnaissance tanks.

From 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., NKVD troops, supported by guns, mortars, and tanks, made 22 attacks, which were repulsed by Ukrainian insurgents. UPA fighters counterattacked several times. At night, despite the encirclement, the UPA, divided into small groups, began a breakthrough from the "kettle" in the direction of Pnyatyn. NKVD troops sent a group of 50 men in pursuit of the rebels with the support of four tanks. Soviet troops caught up with the guerrillas in Pniatyn when they stopped there to rest. Tanks fired on UPA positions, inflicting additional heavy losses on the insurgents. According to Ukrainian sources, the attack of the NKVD internal troops was stopped by Dmytro Karpenko, "Yastrub" personally damaged one of the tanks with an anti-tank gun.

According to Soviet data, Ukrainian guerrillas lost 165 killed and 15 taken prisoner. The NKVD had six killed and 32 wounded. The NKVD seized two anti-tank guns, five machine guns, and 31 rifles. The UPA acknowledged the loss of 17 killed and 25 wounded near Univ, seven killed and eight wounded in Pniatyn. According to their estimates, the NKVD troops had 170 killed and 120 wounded or even 303 killed.

Attacks on the Polish Army in the USSR (1944)

In 1944, Ukrainian partisans also attacked soldiers of the 1st Polish Army stationed in Volhynia from May 1 to July 15, 1944. As in the case of the ChA units, there were constant attacks on small units and individual soldiers. The Ukrainians achieved their greatest success on June 23, 1944, when they attacked a reconnaissance group of the 7th Artillery Regiment marching from Tsumani to the Klevan outpost. The ambush killed four Polish soldiers - the commander of the 7th Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Kazimierz Kulczycki, Lieutenant Colonel Wladyslaw Dobzanski, Deputy Chief of the Information Department, Lieutenant Józef Lozowski and his driver. One soldier was wounded.

Battle of Leschava-Horishna (October 28, 1944)

The biggest battle of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army against the NKVD in Poland took place on October 28, 1944, at five o'clock in the morning near the village of Leszczawa-Horishnia (Przemyśl County, Podkarpackie Voivodeship). A detachment of NKVD troops of up to 300 soldiers was attacked by an overwhelming force of up to 500 men with 70-80 submachine guns. The Enkavedists were opposed by the Chornolisky hut of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

The battle lasted more than 15 hours, and reinforcements approached the Soviet units (up to 800 men with armored vehicles). According to the UPA, NKVD troops lost 207 men, two armored vehicles and 13 trucks. The UPA estimated its losses at 17 killed (including the commander of the Foma hundred), eight wounded, and three who later died of their wounds. Captain Hrin (Stepan Stebelsky), the future organizer of the assassination attempt on the Deputy Minister of Defense of Poland, General Karol Swierczewski, took part in that battle.

Impeding mobilization of Ukrainians in the RSCA

Entering the territory of Western Ukraine, the Soviet command launched mass conscription into the Red Army. The Kremlin's mobilization policy in the region had a special purpose: along with the replenishing Soviet armed forces, its task was also to deprive the liberation movement of doing the same, that is, to undermining the social base of the UPA.

From the beginning of 1944 to April 25, the active army was replenished by about 170,000 inhabitants of the Rivne, Volyn, and Ternopil regions. By September 23, 33,745 Ukrainians and 13,701 Poles had been mobilized in Lviv Oblast, 105,761 and 30,072 in Ternopil Oblast, 2,5004 and 9,197 in Drohobych Oblast, 50,784 and 8,447 in Stanislavsk Oblast, 79,472 and 3,067 in Volyn Oblast, and 98,693 and 5,262 in Rivne Oblast, Chernivtsi - 59,561 and 2,145, and a total of 524,898 people, including 453,020 Ukrainians and 71,878 Poles.

Soviet mobilization in the region faced enormous problems. The OUN leadership and the UPA command ordered their propaganda departments and combat groups to oppose mobilization attempts in every possible way. To do this, they recommended falsifying or destroying conscription letters, boycotting received calls to military registration and enlistment office, and military actions to return the conscripted. Another way to counter mobilization was to call people to guerrilla war shortly before the day they were due to show up at the military enlistment office. According to the instructions received, UPA units often entered the villages and forbade people to join the Red Army at public meetings.

The boycott of mobilization in the RSCA bore fruit. For example, in April 1944 in the Rivne region, out of 69,110 people subject to mobilization, only 2,620 appeared on the agenda of the military registration and enlistment offices. The exception was the cities, where most of those called did respond to the call. By September 1, 1944, the mobilization goals of the 1st Ukrainian Front were only 56% met.

The guerrillas carried out attacks aimed at preventing moreilization:

• On the night of March 6–7, 1944, the soldiers attacked the Rivne military enlistment office. The building burned down.
• On August 11, 1944, 405 mobilized recruits left Stanislav for Stryi under the protection of four Red Army soldiers. Near the village of Vista in the Kalush region (24 km from Stanislavov), the convoy was ambushed. Taking advantage of the confusion, 166 recruits fled into the woods.
• By August 29, 1944, there had been as many as six attacks on recruits in the Stanislavshchyna.
• On August 23, 1944, in the area of ​​the village of Chervone, Berezhany district, guerrillas attacked a column of 850 recruits accompanied by 80 soldiers. Seven were killed in action, and six Red Army soldiers were wounded. Eight recruits were also killed and 12 were injured. According to Soviet sources, the soldiers lost eighteen men.

Attacks on cities in 1944

Attacks on large cities and towns, the so-called district centers, were of special importance and required a large force, at least several hundred men. According to Ukrainian historian Anatoliy Kenty, the UPA command attacked the headquarters of district authorities:

• “a) to force the Soviet authorities to leave more forces in district centers and thus weaken their presence in rural areas;
• b) create obstacles to the strengthening of local government and paralyze their actions against the liberation movement;
• c) interrupt the collection of agricultural contingent and other actions of the village authorities.

So on the night of January 18–19, 1944, the soldiers attacked Ostroh. During the attack, they burned twelve buildings, including the buildings of the district committee of the CP(B)U, the NKVD regional department, club, pharmacy, and school. Twenty-five Poles were killed. On the night of February 23–24, 1944, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army attacked Volodymyrets. About 400 nationalists surrounded the NKVD building, where Soviet party activists were hiding. The UPA called on them first to drop their weapons and then opened fire. The battle lasted 2.5 hours. The Soviets lost four killed and seven wounded. Among the dead were, among others, the platoon commander of the Samitsky fighter battalion. After the attack, the Council held a "series of actions" to identify nationalists. Eight people were arrested.

On the night of August 19–20, 1944, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army attacked Komarno in the Drohobych region. The target of the attack was the NKVD building. The post office was taken under control, VNOS № 03098 was attacked, the building of the NKVD was surrounded, grenades were thrown at it from the beginning, and then with the shout of "Glory to Bandera," they stormed it, releasing seventeen OUN prisoners (or 25, according to another version). The losses of the guerrillas were estimated at six killed.

On the night of August 30–31, 1944, two Ukrainian SLE fighters attacked Jezupil. The guerrillas stormed the NKVD building, shot three officers and their secretary, released seven Ukrainian prisoners, and confiscated the NKVD arhcives. On the night of December 8–9, 1944, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army attacked the railway station in Sniatyn . About a hundred meters of railway tracks were blown up, a car crashed, a bridge and a distillery burned down. Two days later, on December 11, the attack was repeated, but the Council repulsed it this time without losses.

The NKVD and NKDB headquarters were most often attacked in order to eliminate state security officers and release arrested OUN members. Attacks were important. They forced the Soviets to be constantly vigilant and to keep in the cities at least the minimum forces necessary for defense. This weakened the actions of the authorities, and on the other hand, raised the morale of the guerrillas and the population.

Attacks on the railways

In 1944-1945, compared to the German occupation, there were more UPA attacks on the railways. For example, on August 3, a military train was blown up between Klesiv and Strasheve stations, ten cars derailed, and 8 Soviet soldiers were killed. The breakdown lasted ten hours. On August 11, 1944, a train was blown up near Kamyanka-Strumylova, destroying eight cars. In 1944, the UPA blew up a medical unit in the Rivne region and took 40 nurses into the woods.

On May 1, 1945, partisans blew up a train in the Sarny-Klesiv area. Twenty-seven Soviets were killed, including three majors and one colonel. On September 30, 1945, an armored train between Klesiv and Tomashogrud stations derailed with the help of a mine planted by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army soldier. On the same day, but between Stryi and Stanislav, the guerrillas blew up a fuel truck. Eight tanks with their contents burned. Two carriages and two steam locomotives derailed.

It is difficult to judge how many of these and other actions were the work of the UPA and how many sabotage groups were created by the Germans. However, the frequency of attacks on the railways leaves no doubt that the Ukrainian guerrillas tried to weaken the military potential of the USSR, seeing a chance to win the war.

The first half of 1945

The losses suffered by the UPA in 1944, in a clash with NKVD troops, forced the OUN-b leadership to rethink tactics. Realizing that in a skirmish with the NKVD they could not succeed, in early February 1945. Shukhevych, Dmytro Hrytsai (head of the UPA Central Command), Roman Kravchuk, head of the OUN Galician regional leadership, P. Duzhiy, propaganda officer of the OUN Central leadership, Mykola Arsenych, head of the OUN Central Executive Committee, Vasily Cook. During the meeting, it was decided to move to action using mobile (small) units (four), large units to partially disband, and subordinate combat groups to the territorial leadership.

On January 29, 1945, in the Kalush region, an NKVD operative group led by Petro Furmanchak captured former UNS commander Oleksandr Lutsky. For almost two years, during interrogations, he spoke in detail about the history of the creation and activities of the UNS, UPA, and the OUN Security Council. Lutsky was shot dead in Kyiv in November 1946.

According to Soviet data, at the end of February 1945 40 large units of the UPA (2608 people) and 68 small groups and units of the Security Service numbering 1115 soldiers, a total of 3169 soldiers operated in the Rivne region, and in the Volyn region - 28 "gangs" of 25- 150 soldiers (about 1,200 in all).

After the death on February 12, 1945 of the commander of the UPA-North and the leader of the OUN (B) at the PZUZ Dmytro Klyachkivsky ("Klima Savura"), the leadership was headed by Mykola Kozak ("Smok"). Assessing in one report the situation with underground personnel in the Western OUN on the PZUZ, he acknowledged that among them - only 30% of reliable, active OUN members, and the rest - NKVD agents (50%) or ideological, passive elements (20%). From January–August 1945, the OUN Security Service liquidated 833 OUN members, who were accused of collaborating with the NKVD and KGB.

In connection with the end of hostilities on European territory in World War II, UPA Commander-in-Chief Roman Shukhevych in May 1945 issued a statement entitled "Fighters and Commanders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army!", In which he noted the contribution of UPA soldiers to victory over Germany.

In all, according to Soviet data, 9,238 Chekist military operations were conducted against the UPA in the first half of 1945: 2,565 in January, 1,448 in February, 1,849 in March, 1,568 in April, 1,205 in May, and 1,603 in June. The result was the death of 34,210 members of the liberation movement, captured 46059; appeared with the guilt of 25868 soldiers, a total of 106137. In addition, 5717 "gang manuals" were arrested, 5395 families of "bandits" were evicted (12,773 people).

In all, the Red Army suffered the following casualties as a result of attacks by the UPA and armed members of the OUN (b) and the suppression of armed resistance by other insurgent groups (UNRA and Melnyk's detachments) in 1944: 157 officers and 1,880 soldiers and sergeants were killed, hanged and wounded - 74 and 1770, respectively, "missing and taken to the forest" - 31 and 402. From the beginning of the year to May 1, 1945 were "killed or hanged" 33 officers and 443 soldiers and sergeants, 11 officers and 80 soldiers and sergeants disappeared missing. During the NKVD operations against the UPA in the first half of 1945 it seized a large amount of weapons, ammunition and military equipment: six guns, 268 machine guns and 2,024 hand machine guns, 125 mortars, five grenade launchers, five flamethrowers, 74 PTR, 4968 submachine guns, 17030 rifles and pistols, 30,490 grenades, 7,385 mines, nearly three million rounds of ammunition, 31 radio stations, and seven printing presses.

UPA and the NKVD in 1945

UPA propaganda poster, 1948. Text: Freedom to nations, freedom to people

Elimination of "Klim Savur"

On January 26, 1945, 22 km southeast of Kamen-Kashirsky, near the village of Yaino, the 9th Rifle Company of the 169th NKVD Regiment encountered a UPA detachment. Seventeen guerrillas were killed in the battle. The Soviets, according to their own data, lost only one person (a deputy company commander). However, Soviet success was determined by comparing mutual losses. During the firefight, NKVD officers detained in Volyn one of the top commanders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Yuri Stelmashchuk - "Red" (commander of the "Tours"), who was ill with typhus.

The details of the interrogation he underwent are likely to remain secret forever. The fact is that Stelmashchuk on February 8, 1945, in the presence of Deputy People's Commissar of the USSR General Tymofiy Strokach revealed, among other things, that on November 30, 1944, he met with UPA Commander in Volyn Dmytro Klyachkivsky (Klim Savur) near the Orzhivsky hamlet. As Stelmashchuk admitted, on January 30, 1944, they had another meeting with Savur. According to Stelmashchuk, Klyachkivsky hid in the woods during the day and in the homes of insurgent sympathizers at night. As a rule the "special purpose unit" under the command of Vasily Pavlonyuk (Uzbek) was located under cover one to 1.5 km away. He also described the house where Savur was hiding.

On February 10, 1945, a large NKVD unit transferred to the area in the center of the villages of Orzhiv, Grabiv, Pokosy, Susk, and Brovniki, consisting of the 20th and 24th brigades of the NKVD internal troops. On the first day, Soviet troops discovered and liquidated the Uzbek detachment of Klim Savur’s guard. Twenty two guerrillas were killed, but the commander of the UPA-North could not be found.

On February 12, 1945, an operative-military group of the Klevan Regional Department of the NKDB and the 233rd Separate Battalion of the NKVD under the command of Senior Lieutenant Khabibulin, clearing the forest near the Orzhiv farms in the Klevan district of Rivne region, found three UPA soldiers. They refused to surrender and opened fire, and then fled into the woods. During the pursuit, all were destroyed. Klyachkivsky was mortally wounded by Sergeant Baronov and Corporal Sokolov.

Soviet troops lost one killed. Three submachine guns, two pistols, a revolver and the Order of the Red Banner were found among the killed partisans. Only Klyachkivsky's body was identified. During the operation, 42 "bandits" and 100 people who refused to enlist in the Soviet Army were killed or arrested.

UPA attacks on cities in 1945

On October 31, 1945, the UPA decided to attack Stanislav. The city was attacked by the Skazheni unit under the command of Rizun (Vasyl Andrusyak). The raid was preceded by mortar shelling of the city center, which caused panic. Then up to 400 insurgents entered the city. The groups attacked pre-determined targets - the NKVD department, the party's regional committee, the military registration and enlistment office, pharmacies, shops, warehouses, partisan apartments, and apartments of state security officers. They retreated in an organized manner, capturing up to fifty people (party members and Enkavedists) and seizing equipment.

Post-war period

After the end of the German-Soviet war, the territory of the USSR underwent significant changes. On June 29, 1945, the USSR and Czechoslovakia concluded an agreement according to which the Transcarpathian region became part of the USSR. On August 16, 1945, the Soviet Union concluded an agreement with Poland under which Lemko, Kholm, Nadsyannia, and Podlasie became part of the Polish People's Republic, and Galicia and Volhynia were assigned to the Soviet Union.

In the postwar period, the Bolshevik regime pursued a policy of forcible Sovietization of the newly annexed Ukrainian territories. With the advent of Soviet power in Volhynia and Galicia, party and state authorities were restored, and regional and district bodies of the CP (B) U were reorganized. Western Ukrainian cities began to be rapidly Sovietized at the expense of the Russian population. In the first postwar decades, hundreds of thousands of Russians and eastern Ukrainians moved to the western Ukrainian regions. These people came as specialists in the national economy and as representatives of the administrative apparatus of the state. Sovietization contributed to the transformation of all spheres of life according to the standards of a totalitarian society. Komsomol and pioneer organizations were created, an agency network and a network of informants were created.

One of the first steps of the Stalinist regime was the destruction of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), which played an important role in the socio-political and national-cultural life of Ukrainians in Galicia. After the death of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky (November 1944), the liquidation of Uniatism began at the initiative of the state security agencies. Propaganda attempted to discredit the UGCC by portraying it as an "enemy of the people" and an "instrument of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism."

In 1945, the families of "bandits and gang helpers" were evicted on an even larger scale than in the previous year. The total number of repressed was 7,393 families (17,497 people) of soldiers.

According to Soviet data, from October 1 to November 20, 1945, 31 detachments carried out 31 operations to eliminate "gangs" by mobile detachments and groups of troops of the Precarpathian Military District. At the same time, 146 "bandits, accomplices, agents, and suspects" were killed, 13 were wounded and 969 were detained. The loss of mobile units - 17 officers, 46 privates, and sergeants killed, five officers and nine privates wounded, and two more servicemen were taken prisoner.

An information document of the NKVD from January 16, 1946, summed up the results of the "fight against banditry" in the western regions of Ukraine from February 1944 to January 1, 1946. arrested 8,370 "OUN" and 15,959 "active insurgents", appeared with the guilt of 5,058 people. In addition, 83,284 individuals who evaded conscription into the Red Army were detained. Most of these victims were civilians, as the operations of the Interior Ministry's internal troops were accompanied by various abuses. Even Soviet reports show that during the operation "there were cases of illegal executions of innocent citizens, looting, drunkenness, indiscipline of soldiers and officers, and, even worse, these crimes were not fought resolutely by soldiers".

In the winter of 1945-1946, just before the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR scheduled for February 10, 1946, the Communists decided to deal a decisive blow to the UPA. Operation "Great Blockade" was organized. It consisted of the fact that after January 10, 1946, the whole of Western Ukraine was covered by garrisons of Red Army and NKVD soldiers, 3,5000, each numbering from 20 to 100 soldiers and officers, well equipped with automatic weapons. In addition, numerous hounds were created, supported by armored personnel carriers, which conducted continuous raids. The "Great Blockade" lasted until April 1. It cost the rebels at least 5,000 dead. However, the final liberation movement was not defeated.

On February 17, 1946, near the village of Rudnyky in the Manevychi district of Volyn, he was ambushed and the commander of the battle near Gurbami, Petro Oliynyk (Aeneas), was killed. After the death of Dmytro Klyachkivsky, he took over the command of the UPA-North military district.

On February 24, 1946, a raid group of the 215th Rifle Regiment of the NKVD near the Black Forest in the Stanislavshchyna attacked a group of 10 insurgents. The battle was short, the detachment was killed in half an hour. Among the dead was the commander of TO-22 "Black Forest", Vasyl Andrusyak (Rizun).

On April 1, 1946, as a result of a special operation, the commander of the Lysonya military district, Omelyan Polovyi, was caught alive in Lviv. He was initially sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to 25 years in prison camps. According to the Soviet side, in April–August 1946 in the western region of Ukraine the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Service, internal and border troops conducted 42,175 military-KGB operations, which killed 3,277, arrested and captured 3,364 members of the OUN and UPA, 7,225 weapons were seized. In addition, in 1946, fighter battalions carried out 16,907 operations against insurgents and underground fighters, killing more than 1,000 and detaining 5,410 liberators, and seizing 2,902 weapons.

According to Soviet data, a total of 1,619 OUN-UPA armed actions were registered in 1946, 78 of which were attacks on Interior Ministry and MGB officers; for soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army - 123; for WB fighters - 204.

The experience of the "Great Blockade" and the summer months of 1946 forced the leadership of the Ukrainian underground to realize that the possibilities of "insurgent-guerrilla struggle" against the overwhelming forces of the communist regime were exhausted. The Soviets had virtually unlimited opportunities to compensate for losses. Soldiers were deprived of such an opportunity. In July 1946, the leadership of the Ukrainian underground decided to gradually disband large units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and shift all the burden of further struggle to the OUN and WB militants.

On October 4, 1946, the Central Committee of the CP (B) U adopted a resolution "On the state of the struggle against the remnants of Ukrainian-German nationalists in the western regions of the USSR." The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Committee, secretaries of regional and district committees of the party were obliged to put an end to the underestimation in the fight against the remnants of the UPA and the OUN underground and to achieve their complete elimination in the near future. The command of the Prykarpattia Military District was tasked with creating operative groups in the area where the insurgents and underground were fighting and intensifying the struggle against them. The resolution came at the time of preparations for the elections to the general council of the USSR.

Thus began another wave of total attacks on the liberation movement in order to paralyze them in the elections and further liquidation. From January 1 to March 20, 1947, troops and bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Service carried out 12,268 operations, as a result of which the OUN and UPA killed 966 people killed and 1,478 captured. Own losses were estimated at 355 people. From January 20 to 31, 1947, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR conducted special operations, during which, on the basis of intelligence developments, they struck at the command centers and cadres of the liberation movement. In Volyn-Polissya, they managed to eliminate 79 responsible employees of the OUN and UPA. Mykola Arsenych, the head of the SB-OUN, was among those killed. According to the Soviet side, the measures taken have led to the complete confusion, loss of ties and management of grassroots organizations in the OUN underground.. There was an intensification of the tendency of voluntary surrender of insurgents and underground to the Soviet authorities or their transition to Polish territory.

In January–March 1947, Soviet sources noted 272 actions by the OUN and UPA. At the same time, it was emphasized that the state of the struggle against the Ukrainian underground was deteriorating, as a result of which activity intensified and the losses of the Soviet side increased. On April 5, 1947, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) adopted a resolution "On Intensifying the Fight Against the Remnants of Ukrainian-German Nationalist Gangs in the Western Regions of the Ukrainian SSR." It noted the weak struggle against UPA units and the OUN underground by party organizations in the western regions and the MGB, and stressed that state security agencies were unsatisfactorily preparing and conducting military-KGB operations, many of which ended in vain. Attention was also drawn to the shortcomings of combat and political training of fighters of fighter battalions.

One of the main goals of the Soviet state security agencies was the commander of the UPA-West Vasyl Sidor (Shelest). On April 14, 1949, he and his wife were found by the MGB operative group under the command of senior lieutenant Litvinenko. Both were killed in the battle. Between May 1945 and 1949, the Soviet government announced seven amnesties for members of the nationalist underground. Up to 30,000 insurgents took advantage of the government's proposal to lay down their arms in exchange for a full pardon in May 1945, and by December 1949 alone, more than 77,000 members of the Resistance had taken advantage. Many of them faced a cruel fate - the death penalty, hard labor, exile.

UPA and other anti-communist movements

Negotiations between Ukrainian and Polish anti-communist insurgents in the village of Ruda Ruzhanetska in the Lublin region. May 21, 1945

See also: Operation Priboi and Guerilla war in the Baltic states

After 1945, the UPA actively cooperated with the Polish anti-communist underground. In May, at the initiative of the Home Army, negotiations were held between it and the UPA in March in Ruda Różaniecka, and reached agreement on joint action against Soviet troops. The success of contacts between the Ukrainian and Polish underground varied by region. In some Ukrainian-Polish borderlands, they lasted from 1945 to 1948. In other regions, cooperation between Polish and Ukrainian nationalists was less successful and in fact limited to neutrality; in other regions, UPA and AK-WIN units conducted joint operations against Polish police and security management.

One of the most powerful centers of armed resistance in the USSR in the postwar period, along with Western Ukraine and Poland were the Baltic countries, where the Forest Brothers were active. The leader of the anti-Soviet liberation struggle was Lithuania, where until 1953 there was armed resistance to Soviet rule. The OUN paid special attention to the need to establish contacts with representatives of the Lithuanian underground, because in 1946 some Lithuanian political emigrés became part of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Peoples (ABN). The first contacts with the Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance movement were established in 1948 in southern Belarus. Here the Kobrin district leadership of the OUN was able to get in touch with a group of Lithuanian partisans who had moved there. On January 15, 1949, the head of the OUN leadership in the North-Western Ukrainian Lands (PZUZ), Vasyl Galasa, wrote a letter to the head of the Brest OUN district leadership, in which he approved the attempts of the OUN underground in the territory of the Belarusian Polissya to establish contacts with representatives of the Lithuanian liberation movement. He demanded that the Belarusian district leader establish contact with the leadership of Lithuanian nationalist organizations, having previously learned about their structure, program, tactics of anti-Soviet armed struggle and obtained information about the state of the Lithuanian underground struggle against Soviet rule in Lithuania.

In the summer of 1950, a raid by Ukrainian insurgents on the Baltic territory was organized to seek contacts with representatives of the Baltic resistance movements. Members of the OUN(b) took with them as propaganda material the brochures

• "Do the Bolsheviks Lead to Communism"
• "Who are the Banderas and what are they fighting for" by Peter Fedun
• "Poltava"
• "Platform UGVR"
• "Universal UGVR"

According to Vasyl Galasa's wife, the members of the group were so overwhelmed with literature that they could not take with them more food supplies.

UPA activities in Czechoslovakia

The first Banderas began to penetrate into Czechoslovakia in 1945. They were interested in this country as the shortest route to the American zone of occupation in Austria and Germany. Their actions were also propagandistic - the distribution of leaflets, calls to join the OUN-UPA, criticism of the Soviet government. In August 1945, the UPA unit under the command of Prut (Pavel Vatsyk) raided Slovak territory from Poland. Their purpose was to liberate the camp with German prisoners of war in Kisak. The UPA hoped to include them in its ranks, but due to opposition from Czech intelligence, the raid ended in failure. On September 10, 1945, they returned to Poland.

In November 1945, the UPA sent several detachments to Czechoslovakia (hundreds of Myron, Karmelyuk, Sokol, Periga, Brovka, and Gorbov). The rebels captured several villages - Zbiy, Nova Sedlitsa, Ublyu, Ulych, and so on. The government sent an army of 2,500 men to these areas, which again expelled the insurgents from the country. The operation ended on December 6, 1945.

In March–April 1946, the UPA again organized a major raid on Slovakia. Three hundreds (Myron, Karmelyuk, and Bira) entered the country. Bandera captured several dozen villages in eastern Slovakia. Trying to play the nationalist card, they called on Slovaks to fight for Josef Tiso, and organized village meetings in Slovak villages. Their plan was to organize an anti-communist guerrilla movement in Slovakia (to create a Slovak detachment "Vrhala"), at which, however, they failed. On April 18, 1946, the Czechoslovak Army launched Operation Wide Rake and drove the UPA units into Poland. The eastern border was reinforced by additional army units and equipped with firing points.

In the summer of 1947, three hundred OUN-UPAs invaded Czechoslovakia. In response, the Czechoslovak army under General Juliusz Nosko launched Operation B. The Czechoslovaks had no experience of counter-guerrilla warfare, their units were poorly armed, the shortage was 25-35%, and only 12% of soldiers had had real combat experience. The Czechs suffered heavy losses, but Nosko made tactical changes to the plan of operation. Army units, equipped with walkie-talkies, were divided into operational groups and dispersed through forests and mountains. When UPA units were found in an area, all units were being recruited to destroy them. Due to such actions, one of the three hundred UPA under the command of Burlaka (Vladimir Shchigelsky) was surrounded, destroyed, and partially captured.

Of the other two hundreds (Mikhail Duda and Roman Grobelsky), only Duda’s more or less reached Germany. Grobelsky was captured by the Czechs, and Duda committed suicide in 1950, when he was abandoned on a parachute by British intelligence in the Ivano-Frankivsk region and was surrounded. According to the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior, as a result of Operation Action B, 59 Bandera members were killed, 39 were taken prisoner or wounded, 217 were taken prisoner, and 29 surrendered voluntarily. On the Czechoslovak side, 24 soldiers and a state security officer were killed. Only 1/5 of the original group, 97 people, reached the American occupation zone.

UPA in Poland

Main article: Operation Vistula

Resettlement of Ukrainians in 1947

The OUN considered the south-eastern lands of Poland, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians lived, to be an integral part of the Ukrainian state. In the winter of 1943-1944, the Polish underground, mainly the Home Army, developed these territories. Ukrainian patriots were killed by Polish militants, along with their wives and children, and the rest of the Ukrainian population was required to declare its loyalty and support for the Polish insurgent movement. In the spring and summer of 1944, several UPA units from Volhynia and Eastern Galicia entered the Lublin region. It is often written that their main goal was to protect the Ukrainian population. However, most likely, the OUN-B and the UPA, knowing about the operation "Storm", also sought to eliminate the Polish guerrilla movement.

Back in January 1944, the Ukrainian underground established structures here, creating in the eastern voivodeships of Poland (Podkarpackie, Lublin) VI military district of the UPA "Xiang", subordinate to the UPA-West, led by Vasyl Sidor ("Shelest"). The Ukrainian underground in Poland was headed by: Yaroslav Starukh - "Flag" - the leader of the OUN in the Transcarpathian region, the first commander of VO-6 "Xiang" was "Mushka "), after his death in battle with the NKVD troops in December 1944, the commander was Major Myroslav Onyshkevych - "Orest", Petro Fedorov - "Dalnych" - head of the OUN Security Service in Poland and Vasyl Galasa - "Orlan" - was responsible for propaganda. The most famous leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the Transcarpathian region were Ren (Martin Mizerny), Brodich (Roman Grobelsky), Hrin (Stepan Stebelsky), and Burlaka (Vladimir Shchigelsky). Despite their small numbers, Ukrainian guerrillas acted very actively and decisively.

The task of the UPA units was to protect the local Ukrainian population from forced deportation to the USSR. In order to prevent the "de-Ukrainization" of the original Ukrainian ethnic territory, UPA units attacked resettlement commissions of the Polish military, fought against chauvinistic elements that terrorized the Ukrainian population, burned villages from which Ukrainians had been expelled and where Poles settled. The UPA became especially active in the autumn of 1945. On September 9, 1945, the UPA command ordered its units to oppose the eviction operation. In response, Polish police and security forces often resorted to repression against the civilian Ukrainian population. Then it was decided to intensify the process of resettlement of Ukrainians to the USSR. About 500,000 Ukrainians were deported to the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. The UPA resisted. Its actions were aimed at destroying and damaging roads - blowing up bridges, railways, railway stations, and the elimination of resettlement commissions. In total, from July 1945 to March 1946, the OUN carried out more than 50 sabotages and terrorist attacks in eastern Poland aimed at disrupting the resettlement of Ukrainians to the USSR.

Of particular note are the battles for the town of Bircha, in which the soldiers, led by Commander Ren, attacked the garrison of the Polish Army three times, and only the last attack in January 1946 was unsuccessful.

Until the beginning of 1947, all the most capable forces of the army and security forces of the People's Republic of Poland were involved in the struggle against the Polish armed nationalist underground, which was subordinated to the émigré government in London. There was clearly a lack of forces to fight the UPA soldiers. In Zakerzonia, there were several armed organizations of the Polish anti-communist underground, which focused on the London government. The main armed force was the Army of Craiova (AK), which in 1945 was renamed the "Freedom and Independence" (WIN). The AK was formally dissolved on January 19, 1945, by order of its commander-in-chief Leopold Okulytsky ("The Bear"). However, weapons depots and a secret network of fighters were preserved. As mentioned above, in 1945 ViN tried to agree with the UPA on a joint struggle against the Communists. However, in the Transcarpathian region, there were even more extremist organizations, such as the [[National Armed Forces|National Armed Forces (NHS). All of them were united by a negative, chauvinistic attitude towards Ukrainians. They saw only one solution to the "Ukrainian question" - ethnic cleansing. In June 1945, the Ukrainian village of Verkhovyna was exterminated by the NHS, which killed 194 residents, including women and children.

The Polish government began the final liquidation of the UPA on its territory in April 1947, creating an operational group "Vistula", which consisted of five army infantry divisions (3rd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 8th). 9th Infantry Division of the Polish Army), 1st Division of the Internal Security Corps and two separate regiments (5th Sapper and 1st Automobile). Up to 20 thousand soldiers and officers were involved. The general leadership was entrusted to the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, General Stefan Mossor.

In the autumn of 1947, after the deportation of 160,000 Ukrainians from the south-eastern voivodeships of Poland, the UPA's activities in the Transcarpathian region became hopeless. As a result, a small part of the Xiang Group broke through Czechoslovakia into West Germany, and other UPA units defeated Polish troops.

Contacts with the special services of the West

Following a March 1946 speech by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declaring the beginning of the Cold War, the OUN, like other anti-Soviet liberation organizations in Eastern Europe, came under the scrutiny of British and US intelligence services. OUN-B supporters were especially active in these contacts. Hoping for a split in the anti-Hitler coalition and an imminent war between the United States and Britain, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on the other, they seriously hoped that World War III would bring freedom and independence to Ukraine.

By 1947, about 250,000 Ukrainians were in IDP camps in the western occupation zones of Germany, Austria, and Italy. Many of these people were members or sympathizers of the OUN. After 1947, UPA fighters began to penetrate the American-occupied zone through Czechoslovakia. Camps for displaced persons became a place for the spread of ideas of Ukrainian nationalists, and Stepan Bandera set about the task of establishing control over Ukrainian emigrant circles.

One of a number of secret CIA operations against the USSR, conducted in cooperation with the secret services of Great Britain, Italy, and Germany, was called "Aerodynamics". Its essence was that the CIA provided funding and training for UPA soldiers, provided training bases and instructors, and later dumped (landed) insurgents on Soviet territory. There they were asked to collect a variety of intelligence: data on military and industrial facilities, the location of military units, their names, weapons, equipment, location of airfields, length of runways, types of aircraft and their number, the exact location of the party and administrative buildings, location of railway stations, transport, the mood in the army and the people, and also to recruit new members for OUN underground.

The operation as a whole failed. Most of the paratroopers were killed or captured, some were recruited by the Soviet secret services, and they soon began airing, providing Western intelligence with disinformation. For example, after a group of paratroopers led by a member of the OUN (b) and Bandera's godfather, Myron Matvieiko, seized a group of paratroopers in June 1951, they "met" nine more OUN groups in the following weeks and months, capturing 18 people. destroyed, and 26 taken prisoner. At the same time, five of the prisoners showed readiness to cooperate with the MGB. And after a while, radio operators led by Matvieiko began to supply the West with radiograms with misinformation. They later practiced for another 10 years.

On March 17, 1951, the UPA appealed to the US government to assist Ukrainian insurgents in the fight against the USSR.

Reports of the destruction of power plants in Lviv and the Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi district by UPA soldiers in December 1946

In January 2017, the CIA declassified a large amount of material relating to the CIA's relations with Ukrainian nationalists. American spies contacted the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) immediately after the war, in the second half of the 1940s; and this connection was broken only in the early 90's, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the earliest documents dates back to April 1947. The report on terrorist acts committed on the territory of Ukraine states that a power plant was blown up in Lviv and a hydroelectric power plant in the Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi district. A large number of civilian casualties had been reported.

The final suppression of the national liberation movement

The losses suffered by the Ukrainian underground in the second half of the 1940s were difficult to compensate. After the early 1950s, only deep-seated OUN militants fought. Fighting them increasingly turned into "sudden attacks". During the transitions, the guerrillas pretended to be local peasants, had with them various household tools - axes, saws, or fishing rods. They watered their tracks with kerosene, sprinkled with tobacco or pepper, moved along the bottom of rivers and streams, or went out on roads where there was heavy traffic - all to deceive the pursuit, which conducted a search using dogs. The activity of the underground fell, but this did not prevent it from carrying out operations from time to time. A defiant action, for example, was organized on July 10, 1951 in Nadvirna. At around 11 pm, guerrillas stormed a local hospital, killing two MGB guards who were watching a wounded OUN activist, taking the woman away and fleeing.

In March 1950, UPA Commander-in-Chief Roman Shukhevych was killed. On March 3, 1950, liaison officer Daria Husiak (pseudonym "Darka", "Nusya") was arrested. With the help of an in-house implementation of the Rozy MGB agent, it was possible to find out the exact address of another of Shukhevych's assistants. On March 5, MGB officers led by Pavel Sudoplatov established that Shukhevych was in a cooperative store in the village of Belogorshcha near Lviv. As Pavlo Sudoplatov wrote in his memoirs, the General of the State Security Service “Drozdov demanded that Shukhevych lay down his arms - in this case he was guaranteed his life.” Shukhevych, trying to break out, threw two hand grenades. A firefight erupted, in which Shukhevych was killed."

At the turn of 1950-1951, the MGB searched for the UPA-North commander Ivan Lytvynchuk-Dubovy in the Demydiv district of Rivne region, who is considered one of the main initiators of the first anti-Polish actions in Poland. Surrounded in a bunker, he blew himself up.

In 1952, the Khmelnytsky Oblast State Security Service liquidated two OUN guerrilla groups in the Kyiv Oblast and three in the Vinnytsia Oblast. It is worth noting that the Soviets managed to create a fictitious OUN leadership in this area under the leadership of Agent "N-26", against members of the underground, he spoke under the pseudonym "Skob". Subsequently, "N-26" played an important role in the liquidation of the OUN Central Committee.

In July 1953, the Chekists captured the last commander of the UPA North, Vasyl Galas (Orlan). To capture him, a special group of the State Security Service "West" was even created and a separate operation was developed. The noise was taken with the help of a sleeping pill. He actively cooperated with the investigation, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Zhytomyr.

After Shukhevych's death, Colonel Vasyl Kuk- ("Lemish") took command of the underground forces. He and his wife were arrested on May 24, 1954. This date marked the end of the Ukrainian underground as an organized entity. However, the search for certain groups and individuals who tried to survive continued. Gradually, they were caught or exterminated by the KGB.

As of March 17, 1955, there remained a total of eleven small UPA groups in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, with a total of 32 members, 17 single underground activists, and 50 illegals. Although so many insurgents were no longer able to respond adequately to the repressive measures of the Soviet government, in 1955-1956 they carried out 35 actions, including 10 assassinations and 15 attempted assassinations.

In July 1955, after a 10-hour battle in the village of Sushky, the last OUN militia in the Zhytomyr region, consisting of two underground fighters, was destroyed. The last active group of the OUN, consisting of three people, was physically liquidated by the KGB in April 1960 in the Ternopil region.

According to official data prepared in Soviet times, the underground OUN-B and UPA in 1944-1956 carried out 14,424 armed attacks. As a result of these actions, Soviet soldiers lost 30,676 killed, including 8,340 law enforcement officers, servicemen of the internal and border troops, the Red Army, and fighters of fighter battalions. More than 15,000 killed were civilians - officials, peasants and collective farmers.

In February 1990, the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR published these data, and since then they have been accepted as official. But the intelligence officers themselves have repeatedly noted that the figures above cannot be considered final. First, it did not include Red Army victims of the OUN of the early German-Soviet period. Secondly, Soviet partisans killed by the OUN-UPA were not taken into account. Third, information about the victims came to the authorities very irregularly, especially in the first years after the restoration of the Soviet regime in the western regions of the USSR, and therefore the records were kept only sporadically in some areas. Finally, even the existing records have been repeatedly violated due to constant reorganizations of the law enforcement and state security bodies themselves, as well as the relevant departments responsible for counteracting the liberation movement.

For example, one report states that the greatest losses of the Soviet side occurred in 1945 and amounted to only 3,451 people. And the certificate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR from May 28, 1946, prepared by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Timofey Strokach for the Central Committee of the CP (b) U, states that losses on the Soviet side for the same year, 1945, amounted to 1,072 people results of "gang manifestations". Information about the victims came to the authorities very irregularly, especially in the first years after the restoration of the Soviet regime in the western regions of the USSR, and therefore the record was kept only sporadically in some areas. Finally, even the existing records have been repeatedly violated due to constant reorganizations of the law enforcement and state security bodies themselves, as well as the relevant departments responsible for counteracting the liberation movement. For example, one report states that the greatest losses of the Soviet side occurred in 1945 and amounted to only 3,451 people. And in the certificate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR from May 28, 1946, prepared by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Timofey Strokach for the Central Committee of the CP(b)U, it is stated that losses of the Soviet side for the same year, 1945, amounted to 1,072 people results of "gang manifestations" information about the victims came to the authorities very irregularly, especially in the first years after the restoration of the Soviet regime in the western regions of the USSR, and therefore the record was kept only sporadically in some areas. Finally, even the existing records have been repeatedly violated due to constant reorganizations of the law enforcement and state security bodies themselves, as well as the relevant departments responsible for counteracting the liberation movement. For example, one report states that the greatest losses of the Soviet side occurred in 1945 and amounted to only 3,451 people. And in the certificate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR from May 28, 1946, prepared by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Timofey Strokach for the Central Committee of the CP (b) U, it is stated that losses of the Soviet side for the same year, 1945, amounted to 1,072 people results of "gang manifestations".

On the other hand, between 445,000 and 500,000 residents of the western regions of Ukraine were killed, arrested, or deported as a result of repression by the secret services to suppress the UPA. The number of dead alone reached more than 155,000 insurgents, and the number of deportees reached 203,662, so Soviet repression, accompanying the struggle against the underground, affected every tenth inhabitant of Western Ukraine.

In battles with the UPA in 1944-45, the NKVD captured more than 300 German servicemen (mostly Abwehr and Gestapo officers) who remained in the insurrection. The Germans remained until the end of January 1947, when the OUN Security Council purposefully liquidated them so as not to compromise the movement to the West.

In October 1956, an uprising against the local communist government broke out in Hungary. From the former members of the UPA in exile were created several units, who went to Budapest and took part in the battles against the Soviet occupation forces. They defended the bridges across the Danube, which connect the two parts of the Hungarian capital - Buda and Pest. Most of them died.

The OUN-B leader himself, Stepan Bandera, was assassinated in October 1959 in Munich by KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev. After his release from the German concentration camp in 1944, Bandera led the OUN movement in exile. Meanwhile, when some of his allies after the war (Lev Rebet, Mykola Lebid) - first for purely opportunistic reasons - began to mature to the perception of left-liberal European values ​​and in fact split the Bandera faction of the OUN, Bandera remained an integral nationalist for the rest of his life.

See also

• Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
• Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
• 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician)
• History of Galicia (Eastern Europe)
• Sanation
• Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
• Operation Reinhard
• Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany

Further reading

• PAVLO SAVCHENKO, MAJOR, ARMED FORCES OF UKRAINE (2003). THE INSURGENT MOVEMENT IN UKRAINE DURING 1940s-1950s: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE CASE STUDY OF THE UKRAINIAN INSURGENT ARMY (OUN-UPA) (Master's). Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
• Erlacher, Trevor (2013). "Denationalizing Treachery: The Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Late Soviet Discourse, 1945-85". Region. Slavica Publishers. 2 (2): 289–316. ISSN 2166-4307. JSTOR 43737626.
• Armstrong, John A. (1990). "The Chronicle of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)". Harvard Ukrainian Studies. [President and Fellows of Harvard College, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute]. 14 (1/2): 171–175. ISSN 0363-5570. JSTOR 41036363.
• United States Information Agency (1988). "The Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Documents". Problems of Communism. Documentary Studies Section, International Information Administration. p. 3-PA77. ISSN 0032-941X. Search this book on
• "Revelations from the Russian Archives: Internal Workings of the Soviet Union". Library of Congress.
• Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (2015-10-12). "AERODYNAMIC VOL. 21_0093". Internet Archive.
• Gordon Sander (April 2, 2022). "Long before Ukrainian deportations, Soviets abducted Baltic citizens". Washington Post.
• EIKEL, MARKUS, and VALENTINA SIVAIEVA. “City Mayors, Raion Chiefs and Village Elders in Ukraine, 1941-4: How Local Administrators Co-Operated with the German Occupation Authorities.” Contemporary European History, vol. 23, no. 3, 2014, pp. 405–28, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43299680. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• Anne Applebaum (2003). Gulag: A History. Anchor Books, Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 9780307426123. Search this book on
• MARPLES, David R. (2007). Chapter 4. Making Heroes: the Early days of OUN-UPA In: Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine [online]. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 9786155211355. Search this book on (Available on the Internet: <http://books.openedition.org/ceup/546> generated 29 April 2022)
• MARPLES, David R. Chapter 5. UPA’s Conflict with the Red Army and Soviet Security Forces In: Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine [online]. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007 (generated 29 avril 2022). Available on the Internet: <http://books.openedition.org/ceup/547>. ISBN 9786155211355.
• Yekelchyk, Serhy. “Diktat and Dialogue in Stalinist Culture: Staging Patriotic Historical Opera in Soviet Ukraine, 1936-1954.” Slavic Review, vol. 59, no. 3, 2000, pp. 597–624, https://doi.org/10.2307/2697347. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• von Löwis, Sabine, and Valentine Meunier. “Frontières Fantômes et Ambivalence Des Espaces d’identification En Ukraine.” L’Espace Géographique, vol. 46, no. 2, 2017, pp. 126–42, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26785529. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• KHANIN, VLADIMIR. “The Postcommunist Order, Public Opinion, and the Jewish Community in Independent Ukraine.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 23, no. 1/2, 1999, pp. 85–108, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41036770. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• Katchanovski, Ivan. “Terrorists or National Heroes? Politics and Perceptions of the OUN and the UPA in Ukraine.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 48, no. 2/3, 2015, pp. 217–28, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48610449. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• von Hagen, Mark. “Wartime Occupation and Peacetime Alien Rule: ‘Notes and Materials’ toward a(n) (Anti-) (Post-) Colonial History of Ukraine.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 34, no. 1/4, 2015, pp. 153–94, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44364491. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• KUZIO, TARAS. “A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING NATIONALISMS IN UKRAINE: DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTIONS, SEPARATISM AND RUSSIAN HYBRID WAR.” Geopolitics, History, and International Relations, vol. 7, no. 1, 2015, pp. 30–51, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26805276. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• Iwanow, Nikolaj. “Die Polen in Der Ukraine.” Osteuropa, vol. 46, no. 2, 1996, pp. 164–73, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44919453. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• Chernetsky, Vitaly. “Postcolonialism, Russia and Ukraine.” Ulbandus Review, vol. 7, 2003, pp. 32–62, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25748122. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• BUDUROWYCZ, BOHDAN. “The Greek Catholic Church in Galicia, 1914-1944.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 26, no. 1/4, 2002, pp. 291–375, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41036855. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• Berkhoff, Karel C. “Ukraine under Nazi Rule (1941-1944): Sources and Finding Aids: Part I.” Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 45, no. 1, 1997, pp. 85–103, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41049828. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
• Liber, George O. “Ukraine, Total Wars, and the Dialectics of Integration and Fragmentation, 1914-1954.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 34, no. 1/4, 2015, pp. 129–52, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44364490. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.

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