The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainian: Ukrayinska Povstanska Armiya, UPA) was a 200,000-strong partisan army that fought Nazi Germany from 1942 to 1944 and the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia from 1942 to 1956. It was led by Dmytro Klyachkivsky, among others, and used massacres and terrorism to achieve its goals. Founded during World War II to drive out the Germans, it resumed local resistance for the independence of Ukraine until 1956.
History[]
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was founded on 14 October 1942 during World War II with the goal of creating an independent state of Ukraine within Nazi Germany-occupied Eastern Europe. With 20,000 troops (later growing to 200,000), the UPA operated in Volhynia, Podolia, and Carpathia in the Ukraine, where they fought against Nazis as well as the Soviet Union. They were responsible for the Volyn Tragedy, where they massacred several Volhynian Polish civilians, and the 15 April 1944 assassination of Soviet general Nikolai Vatutin. Their ethnic cleansing of Volhynia was followed by the protection of Ukrainians in southern Poland from deportation and from similar ethnic cleansing actions.
The UPA at times collaborated with Nazi Germany like the Ukrainian Liberation Army did, and they fought the Poles until 1947 and the Soviets until 1949. By the late 1940s, the mortality rate for Red Army troops was higher than it was in the Soviet-Afghan War with the Mujahideen of Afghanistan. Localized resistance continued until 1956, and Ukraine was not to be independent until 1991.