Ukrainian Insurgent Army
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| “ | Liquidate all Polish traces. Destroy all walls in the Catholic Church and other Polish prayer houses. Destroy orchards and trees in the courtyards so that there will be no trace that someone lived there.... Pay attention to the fact that when something remains that is Polish, then the Poles will have pretensions to our land. | „ |
| ~ An order from the OUN to the UPA in early 1944. |
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (also nicknamed UPA) was a paramilitary group of Ukrainian ultranationalists during World War II, serving as the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The UPA had the purpose of achieving the independence of Ukraine, annexing parts of present-day Russia, Poland and Belarus, and during the war it fought against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State and Nazi Germany (although at certain moments of the war the UPA would ally with the Nazis to confront the Soviets and Poles). After the war, the UPA would continue with its armed struggle, now against the Soviet Union and the recently established Polish People's Republic until 1956, the year in which it would be disbanded.
Organizationally, the UPA served as the military arm of the OUN, dedicated to conducting military operations, while the OUN was in charge of administrative and political tasks. Despite this, many of the leaders of the UPA and the OUN were the same people. The largest units of the UPA were called "Kurins, and they were composed of 500-700 soldiers, while the smaller units, nicknamed" Riys ", composed of 10-8 soldiers. Sometimes these units were united and resulted in the "Zahin".
According to the UPA, violence was a valid option to obtain the independence of Ukraine, and they adopted a guerrilla warfare policy similar to that of partisan groups. It is said that in 1944, the UPA numbered up to 20,000 soldiers, and its military campaigns were considered the largest armed movement in history against a communist regime until the Mujahideen campaigns in the Soviet-Afghan War.
War Crimes edit
During the war, the UPA became known for its heinous war crimes against Polish civilians. The UPA adopted a policy of massacring and deporting the Polish populations of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, in an attempt of ethnic cleansing in order to annex Polish territory to the future Ukrainian State. When the UPA reached Polish towns, men were tortured and burned alive, women were gang-raped, children were pounded with axes, and babies were impaled on bayonets. It is said that the Catholic priests were also crucified and the villages burned. On occasions, the UPA partnered with Ukrainian farmers in Polish areas to help them with their ethnic cleansing. An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Poles were killed by the UPA.
The UPA also helped perpetuate The Holocaust, as the UPA members infiltrated the Nazi Army to obtain military training, and under those conditions, they helped the Nazis kill Jews, and the UPA is believed to be responsible for the murder than 200,000 Polish Jews.
Legacy edit
The UPA currently has a rather controversial legacy. On the one hand, several Ukrainians see the UPA as heroic fighters who fought against the Soviet regime to establish the independence of Ukraine, and in several western cities of the country there are several monuments dedicated to the UPA. On the other hand, several Poles and Ukrainians from cities in the east and south of the country consider them as war criminals and there are several monuments dedicated to the victims of the UPA. Some Polish organizations and historians regard the massacres carried out by the UPA as genocide.