Amidst the turmoil of World War II, Ukrainians found themselves in a precarious position as a stateless nation caught in the crossfire of two totalitarian regimes. Mobilised into the Soviet Red Army, they endured some of the most devastating losses on the Eastern Front. Yet, amidst the chaos and strife, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers bravely volunteered to combat Nazism, standing as staunch advocates for the preservation of freedom. Many took up arms in the armed forces of the Allies, notably in the ranks of Great Britain and the USA, where they fought valiantly against tyranny and oppression.
On the flip side, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fought against both totalitarian regimes right in their own homeland, predominantly as part of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Soviet propaganda had long laboured to falsely associate Ukrainian insurgents with the Nazis, obscuring the history of the fierce resistance waged by the Ukrainian underground against German forces. Compounding this distortion was a historical anomaly: while the Nazi occupation of Ukraine lasted from 1941 to 1944, the grip of the Soviet regime persisted for decades, sparking a prolonged struggle against it. It’s crucial to highlight specific instances illustrating the significant threat posed by Ukrainian insurgents to the Nazi occupiers.
Since 1941, members of the Ukrainian nationalist underground faced regular persecution and mass executions. For instance, during the atrocities at Babyn Yar in Kyiv from 1942 to 1943, over six hundred activists from the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), including prominent figures like Olena Teliha, were murdered. A comparable pattern persisted in western Ukraine. According to Polish historian Grzegorz Hryciuk, between October 1943 and mid-June 1944, 1,519 members of the Ukrainian underground were subjected to public executions in Galicia.
In several areas, notably in the historical region of Volyn (Volhynia), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army held sway over entire districts, such as establishing the ‘Kolky Republic’. However, unlike the Russian collaborators, known for the infamous ‘Lokot Autonomy’, the German forces in Volyn attempted to dismantle these self-governed districts and carried out punitive measures against villages.
The campaign to dismantle the Kolky Republic was spearheaded by Reich Commissioner of Ukraine Erich Koch and SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann. They mobilised regular units from the front, including tanks, artillery, and aviation (four planes). Alongside the German SS, Hungarian, Kazakh, and Uzbek formations were also involved. According to memoirist and historian Lev Shankovsky, around 3,000 Germans and their allies, as well as 1,237 Ukrainian Insurgent Army fighters, lost their lives in the clashes for Kolky. Furthermore, approximately 5,000 civilians were affected by the conflict.
Until 1944, when the final German troops were compelled to withdraw from Ukraine, they faced significant challenges in the rural and mountainous regions under insurgent control. One of the notable episodes occurred in July 1944, with the battles near Mount Lopata in the Carpathians against German-Hungarian forces. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army units were under the command of Vasyl Andrusyak. According to widely accepted estimates, Ukrainian Insurgent Army losses amounted to around 50 killed and wounded, while the German side suffered approximately 200 casualties, excluding the Hungarians.
However, Soviet and later Russian propaganda consistently portrayed the Ukrainian liberation movement as allegedly ‘Nazi’ in its essence. Even post-World War II, the USSR attempted to associate the leaders of the OUN with the mass atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. Although these accusations were not substantiated in international courts, starting from the Nuremberg Trials, they became the primary pretext for discrediting Ukrainians, the Ukrainian independence movement and, subsequently, independent Ukraine on the global stage. In our view, the primary objective of this propaganda is not only to undermine Ukraine’s quest for freedom but also to absolve the sins of the USSR itself. The Stalinist regime, glorified in modern Russia (especially in the latest edition of the 2023 history textbook), was a direct collaborator of the Axis powers in the early phases of World War II. In 1939, pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland, and until 1941, the USSR supplied raw materials to Germany alongside ongoing military-technical collaboration. In conjunction with Germany, the USSR occupied the Baltic states, regions of Romania, and Finland. However, following Hitler’s assault on the USSR, Soviet historians and propagandists deliberately downplayed these interactions, concentrating instead on the plight of people caught between two totalitarian empires.
Finally, Ukrainians are not an exception here. Russians continue to constantly accuse the Baltic States or Croatia. Moreover, in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin directly accused Poland of allegedly ‘provoking’ the Nazis in 1939. Thus, Russian history, from the perspective of the state leadership, not only mythologises past events but also directly justifies the cooperation of communists with Hitler. Instead, Ukrainians, their allies or smaller nations fighting for independence are portrayed as the biggest Nazis in Russian propaganda. These double standards should be debunked, and the question of condemning the crimes of the communist regime and attempting to shift responsibility from the aggressor to the victim should be raised on the international level. This will strengthen clear ethical assessments and modern aggression.
