In May 1945, peacetime did not come for all the inhabitants of the USSR. On the territory of Western Ukraine, a powerful and extensive network of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army OUN-UPA continued to operate, better known to the people as Bandera. It took almost ten years for them to defeat the Soviet regime. We will talk about how this "war after the war" was fought.

Cossacks from the Abwehr

The first serious clashes between the Red Army and SMERSH detachments with the OUN-UPA began in the spring and summer of 1944. As Western Ukraine was liberated from the German occupiers, the military formations of the nationalists felt themselves full-fledged masters here, with which the local forests simply swarmed. The old power is gone, the new has not yet had time to take root. And Bandera began to make every effort to discourage the "soviets" from any desire to return to "independent Ukraine." It must be admitted that they put up fierce resistance. So what was the UPA?

Its backbone was formed by the legionnaires of the Nachtigal and Roland battalions disbanded in 1942, and the SS Galicia division defeated in 1944. Many fighters were trained in the Abwehr camps in Germany. Geographically, the rebel army was divided into three groups: "North", "West" and "South". Each group consisted of 3-4 kurens. One kuren included three hundred. A hundred, in turn, was formed from 3-4 chots (platoons). And the primary formation was a swarm, including 10-12 people. In general, a bizarre and terrible mixture of the Abwehr with the Cossacks and the partisan movement.
According to various estimates, the number of UPA ranged from 25 to 100 thousand fighters. They were armed with both German and Soviet weapons. The rebel army also had its own security service, which was engaged in intelligence and performed punitive functions.

Airplane in a dugout

So the Soviet troops were not at all faced with disparate gangs, but with a powerful military organization with a rigid structure. The UPA acted boldly and confidently, especially in the forest area. Here are the testimonies that can be read in the collection of documents "Internal troops in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945":

“Initially, the large bands of the UPA themselves challenged us. Having fortified in advance on advantageous lines, they imposed a battle. In the forests on the Kremenets Upland, the bandits created a system of defensive structures: trenches, dugouts, blockages, etc. As a result of the successful completion of the operation, many weapons were captured , ammunition, including two depots with German shells and mines, even a serviceable U-2 aircraft. A lot of food and clothing depots were found. Together with the UPA bandits, 65 German servicemen were captured."

And yet, at first, the enemy was clearly underestimated. A vivid example of this is the Bandera attack on the convoy accompanying the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Nikolai Vatutin. As a result of a serious wound, the general died.

Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin.

This egregious incident made the army and special services even more actively fight against the UPA. As a result, by the spring of 1945, the state security agencies, the NKVD troops, defeated all large gangs of 300 people or more. According to the Department for Combating Banditry of the NKVD of Ukraine, in 1944 57,405 members of gangs were killed and 50,387 were detained.

Waiting for the "Plague"

However, this was not the final victory. The second and, perhaps, the most difficult phase of the fight against the UPA was coming. Bandera changed tactics, from open confrontation they switched to terror and sabotage. Those who survived the destruction of the kuren and hundreds were reorganized into more maneuverable armed groups of 8-12 people. The leadership, located abroad, gave the underground an instruction to play for time and conserve strength until the onset of the "Plague". Under this name, the beginning of the armed conflict between the countries of the West and the USSR was encrypted in the documents of the OUN. The secret services of the United States and Britain, according to some reports, were fueling hopes for an early war with the "soviets". From time to time they dropped their emissaries, ammunition, money, special equipment into the forests of Western Ukraine from the air.

With parts of the Red Army OUN-UPA now preferred not to get involved. The blow was transferred to the administration and those who sympathized with the Soviet regime. And their number, as a rule, included teachers, doctors, engineers, agronomists, machine operators. The "loyal" Ukrainians were dealt with very cruelly - they were killed by their families, often tortured. On the chest of some of the dead, a note was left "For complicity with the NKVD."

However, a considerable part of the rural population supported the "lads from the forest." Some really perceived them as heroes, fighters for an independent Ukraine, others were simply afraid. They supplied Bandera with food, allowed them to stay. The militants paid for food with "karbovans" from the combat fund (BF). State security officials called them "bifons". As Georgy Sannikov, a veteran of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of State Security and the KGB, recalls in his book "The Great Hunt. The Defeat of the UPA", this money was printed in a typographical way. The banknotes depicted a rebel with a machine gun in his hand, calling for the overthrow of the Soviet regime. Bandera promised the villagers that as soon as they came to power, they would exchange them for real money.

It is clear that many civilians and OUN members were connected by family relations. In order to deprive the OUN-UPA of the material base, the authorities were forced to take tough measures. Part of the relatives of Bandera were resettled in other regions of the country, and active accomplices were sent to a special settlement in Siberia.

However, there were quite a few people, with weapons in their hands, ready to resist Bandera. Fighter detachments were formed from them, the locals called the fighters of these units "hawks". They provided serious assistance to the authorities in the fight against the underground.

Bandera "invisible"

Conspiracy played the most important role for the OUN-UPA. In their activities, Bandera used the experience of the Irish Republican Army and even the Bolshevik revolutionaries they hated. All members of the combat units had pseudonyms that changed frequently. Communication between bandit formations was carried out through verified messengers. As a rule, brothers in arms from different cells did not know each other by sight. Orders and reports were transmitted through "grips" - miniature notes made in pencil on tissue paper. They were rolled up, stitched with thread and sealed with candle paraffin. They left them in a designated place. This whole ingenious system, of course, made it difficult to search for gangs, but it came out "sideways" to the underground workers themselves. In the event of the defeat of a swarm or chot and the death of the "seer" (leader), the survivors could not contact their comrades-in-arms. Therefore, hundreds of Bandera singles wandered in the forests.

But the main know-how of the OUN UPA was underground caches ("kryivki"). As one of the Bandera instructions said: "... every underground worker must know the rules of conspiracy, like a soldier - the charter of field service. An underground worker must live underground." The system of secret shelters began to be created back in 1944 in anticipation of the arrival of Soviet troops, and by the 1950s it had "entangled" all of Western Ukraine. There were different types of caches: warehouses, radio communication points, printing houses and barracks. They were built on the principle of dugouts with the difference that the entrance was disguised. As a rule, a stump or a box with earth served as a "door" to the caches, into which a young tree was planted. Ventilation was taken out through the trees. To create an underground bunker on the territory of a village or village, the militants had to be more resourceful. They disguised the entrance to the shelter as piles of garbage, haystacks, dog kennels and even graves. There were times when the path to the shelter ran through an active well. Here is how one of the veterans of the MGB and KGB describes the sophisticated shelter in the book "SMERSH against Bandera. The war after the war": a disguised door was made in the shaft from the crowns of the well. Behind it was a corridor with two disguised bunker rooms. One was intended for the radio operator, members of the detachment and the dining room. The other was for leadership and meetings. door. A trusted fellow villager lowered the Bandera people."

With such a system of shelters, the OUN UPA fighters became practically "invisible". It would seem that he surrounded the enemy in the forest or in the village - and suddenly he disappeared, evaporated.

Get it out of the ground

At first, it was not easy for Soviet intelligence officers to identify caches. But over time, they learned to literally get the enemy out of the ground.

During large-scale raids, soldiers searched for them with the help of two-meter probes and service dogs. In winter, at sunrise or sunset, you could find an underground lair by a barely noticeable trickle of air, fluctuating in the cold.

It was extremely difficult to take Bandera alive in the bunker. They either entered into a deliberately fatal shootout for themselves, or committed suicide. The decision on self-liquidation was made only by the head of the group. The militants stood facing the wall, and the commander killed them in turn with a shot in the back of the head. After that, he shot himself.

To avoid such an outcome, caches were thrown with gas grenades. Later, when storming the bunkers, they began to use a special drug "Typhoon" - an instant sleeping pill, without side effects. It was developed specifically for such operations in Moscow. Introduced through the vent from small hand-held cylinders with a thin flexible hose.

Borscht with "Neptune"

However, despite the importance of such operations, the search and assault on bunkers was not a priority task for the special services. The main direction remained the introduction of their people into the nationalist underground, the recruitment of agents and the ideological influence on the enemy. It was not the kind of war that was fought, where everything is decided by the force of arms and numerical superiority. The enemy was secretive, insidious and resourceful. And this required non-standard methods of struggle from the special services. And time worked for them. People are tired of a protracted civil war, constant fear for themselves and loved ones. It was no longer possible to cover the "boys from the forest" forever. Yes, and many militants, physically and psychologically exhausted, wanted to return from the forest to their native villages, but they feared reprisals from the OUN-UPA security service. Under such conditions, the MGB en masse begins recruiting agents from among ordinary civilians and accomplices of the OUN-UPA.

The goal was this - to turn every hut, where the Bandera people until recently boldly looked at the wait, into a trap. But how could the owners of the house, and in the post-war period they were usually elderly people or single women, cope with a group of seasoned militants? Firstly, a portable "Alarm" device, powered by rechargeable batteries, was installed in their homes. As soon as the "guests" from the forest appeared on the threshold, the owner imperceptibly pressed the button and sent a radio signal to the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And then it was the turn of the chemical preparation "Neptune-47", created in the special laboratories of the KGB. This psychotropic substance could be added to different types of liquids: vodka, water, milk, borscht. By the way, the agents had "cunning" German-style flasks made in the operational and technical department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. They had two buttons built into them. One acted as a safety device against entering the contents of the Neputna-47 flask. That is, he could, in company with the "lads", sip vodka from one container without harm to himself. People who took this "potion" began to "swim" after 7-8 minutes: their minds became foggy, their movements became slow, they could not even pull the shutter or pull the trigger. And five minutes later, they were sound asleep. Heavy, exhausting sleep with hallucinations lasted 1.5-3 hours.

After the Bandera people fell asleep, police officers and special services entered the hut. "Neptune-47" had one more unpleasant side effect for the "OUN". After waking up for some time, a person is not able to control his actions and willingly answers any questions.

As Georgiy Sannikov, the author of the book "The Great Hunt. The Defeat of the UPA", remarks with irony: "The use of this drug was the strictest secret of state security. However, the entire population of Western Ukraine, including children, knew about it." The people called him "otruta" - translated from the Ukrainian language "poison".

The recruited agents were armed with another drug - Neptune-80. They wetted the rug on the threshold of the house. If a militant who has been in the hut wipes his feet on him, then the dogs within a few days will easily find him on the trail in the forest, which means they will find a cache with the whole gang.

hunted animals

Legendary bandit formations played an important role in identifying Bandera. These are groups of the most experienced employees of the MGB, who were fluent in the Galician dialect of the Ukrainian language, who imitated the OUN-UPA detachments. Often they also included former militants who had gone over to the side of the Soviet authorities. They went to the forest, lived in the same underground bunkers and tried to make contact with real underground workers.

For this, "grips" skillfully "rewritten" by craftsmen of the MGB were also used. The author's handwriting was copied, the essence of the letter was preserved, but the time and place of the meeting were changed. And there were cases when "grips" were stuffed with explosives - such messages were called "surprises". It is clear that the addressee who opened the package died.

As the intelligence network grew, the secret services began to get closer to the leadership of the underground. After all, only by beheading the OUN-UPA, it was possible to finally put an end to Bandera. In 1950, the elusive Roman Shukhevych, aka "Taras Chuprinka", a cornet general, commander of the UPA, was killed in his safe house. The death of the closest associate of Stepan Bandera dealt a serious blow to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Then began the slow agony of the rebel army. After the death of Shukhevych, the leadership of the UPA was taken over by Vasily Kuk, pseudonym Lemesh. Also a very experienced, dangerous and cautious enemy. He had a truly bestial instinct for danger, practically did not leave the bunkers, where he seriously undermined his health. Living conditions there were more than harsh. It took the MGB four years to catch him. Ironically, the last underground shelter of Vasily Cook was a cache created especially for him by state security officers. The general-cornet was lured into a trap together with his wife by a converted "OUN" Mykola named Chumak, whom he completely trusted. They persuaded the hardened Bandera to cooperate in a rather original way. He, who had not climbed out of the forests for a decade, was given something like an excursion throughout Ukraine. Mykola visited Kyiv, Kharkov, Odessa and was amazed by the flourishing, and by no means oppressed by Soviet power, homeland.

Unlike Chumak, it was not possible to recruit Vasyl Kuk, who was fanatically devoted to the idea of ​​Ukrainian nationalism. Nevertheless, he agreed to call on the UPA fighters to lay down their arms, because he understood that their cause was doomed. The last leader of the underground was on the verge of being shot, but the authorities nevertheless spared his life and released him after a six-year sentence. Firstly, they did not want to make him another martyr for the nationalists, and secondly, they emphasized the strength and generosity of the Soviet state, which can afford to leave a serious enemy alive. Vasily Kuk lived in Kyiv to a ripe old age and died in 2007.

P.S.

During the 10 years of fighting the OUN underground from 1945 to 1955, 25,000 military personnel, employees of state security agencies, police and border guards, 32,000 people from among the Soviet party activists were killed.

Good day, friends.

I think there is no need to talk about what is happening in Ukraine now. I just want to note - this is a civil war. Started by Ukrainian traitors in 1941. with the support of Nazi Germany with weapons and money, and continued today - with the support of the West and the USA with money and information (I think the supply of weapons from the USA will not rust).

Can we now fight with weapons in our hands? I'm afraid not. Do we have money in an amount that can compete with the US? No definitely.

But we have a field of war, the victory on which depends entirely on us. This is an information field.

The Nazism that is now rising in Ukraine has Bandera roots, uses his rhetoric, uses his methods. And we, knowing their history, their tricks, can resist them. To everyone who stands on the information barricades to help.

MYTHS ABOUT BANDEROV

Myth No. 1 Bandera did not fight from the very beginning with Russia and, especially, Russians, as they are credited with.

Bandera from the very beginning of their appearance waged a fierce war against the Poles (who were occupiers) and Russians (who were also considered "Muscovite" occupiers). And they were preparing for this war much ahead of time.

"Lahousen gave me an order for review ... The order stated that in order to deliver a lightning strike on the Soviet Union, Abwehr-2, when carrying out subversive work against the USSR, should use its agents to incite national hatred between the peoples of the Soviet Union. In particular, I personally was instructions were given to the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalists, German agents Melnik (nicknamed "Consul-1") and Bandera, to organize provocative speeches in Ukraine immediately after the German attack on the Soviet Union in order to undermine the nearest rear of the Soviet troops, and also in order to convince the international community that that the decomposition of the Soviet rear seems to be taking place.

E. Stolze: ".. At the end of the war with Poland, Germany was intensively preparing for a war against the Soviet Union, and therefore, through the Abwehr, measures were taken to intensify subversive activities, because those measures that were carried out through Melnik and other agents seemed insufficient.

For this purpose, the well-known Ukrainian nationalist Bandera Stepan was recruited, who during the war was released by the Germans from prison, where he was imprisoned by the Polish authorities for participating in a terrorist act against the leaders of the Polish government.

(source - materials of the Nuremberg Trial. Book Nuremberg Trial,. M.)

As Petro Poltava, the "historian" of Bandera, writes about this:

Bandera is a commonly used, popular name of all participants in the insurrectionary and underground liberation struggle, which began against the Nazis during the Nazi occupation, and since 1944 (sic!) Continues against the Bolshevik invaders.

Myth #2 The Banderaites never considered the Russian people as an enemy, nor any other people, such as Poles, Germans or Jews.

There are so many facts here that a small fraction is enough to clearly see their position on this issue.

Testimony of General E. Lahousen, one of the leaders of the Abwehr, at a meeting of the International Military Tribunal on November 30, 1945.

"... Canaris was instructed to create an insurrectionary movement in Ukrainian Galicia, the purpose of which would be the extermination of Jews and Poles ... it is necessary to stage an uprising or insurrectionary movement in such a way that all the yards of the Poles were engulfed in fire and that all Jews were killed."

Fascist troops occupy Lvov. Together with them, the famous Abwehr battalion "Nachtigal" (translated from German - "Nightingale"), consisting of Bandera and led by Roman Shukhevych, Bandera's closest ally, entered the city.

On the same day, the whole city was sealed with Stepan Bandera's appeals: "People! Know! Moscow, Poland, Magyars, Jews are your enemies. Beggars of them! Lyakhiv, Jews, communists, run without mercy! .."

In 1941, Ya. Stetsko declared: “Moscow and Judaism are the biggest enemies of Ukraine. I consider Moscow the main and decisive enemy, which imperiously held Ukraine in captivity. And, nevertheless, I appreciate the hostile and wrecking will of the Jews, who helped Moscow to enslave Ukraine. Therefore, I stand on the positions of the extermination of the Jews and the expediency of transferring to Ukraine the German methods of exterminating the Jews, excluding their assimilation..

(Sources: Berkhoff K.C., Carynnyk M. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Dyukov A. On the participation of the OUN - UPA in the Holocaust: "Moscow and Jews are the main enemies of Ukraine" // IA "REGNUM", 10/14/2007)

I cannot but quote the words of one of Bandera's supporters about how they were guided during the war by the "three principles of Bandera":

"- a fraternal attitude towards those of them who support the struggle of the Ukrainian people for their state and interests; - a tolerant attitude towards those of them who simply live in Ukraine; - a hostile attitude towards those who are hostile to Ukraine, its independence, the state and language."

This paragraph is from the category of those when it is so sad that it is already funny.

Myth #3 Bandera's ideology is not fascist or Nazi

One of the OUN theorists wrote: A. Andrievsky: "Our newest nationalism is not the result of the efforts of the Ukrainian mind, but precisely the product of Italian fascism and German national socialism. Dontsov prepared the basis for such a passion".

(Source: "Stepan Bandera. Perspectives of the Ukrainian Revolution". - Drogobich, 1998. - S. 5-8; Gordusevich S. Stepan Bandera. Lyudina and myth. - K., 2000. - S. 43-44)

Myth No. 4 Bandera did not cooperate with the German occupation regime before the war, but met them as liberators

After the end of the 1st World War and the Civil War, the “Sich Riflemen” and other similar people who found themselves in exile organized themselves in the UVO (Ukrainian military organization), later transformed into the OUN. And back in the 1930s, the “fighters for freedom” gently clung to Hitler , financial streams also flowed, immediately invigorating the hearts of the OUN. They even adjusted the ideology, a kind of second-rate fascism came out. But with complaints: “I go in rows, make up rows and bathe in blood, guard in fires. Fire and blood, life is that will, but death is smacking at their breasts ... You hear the cry - Zig heil! Heil! Sig heil!(Yu. Lipa "Ukrainian Doba", Lviv, 1934).

Already in 1938. in Germany, several training centers were created where OUN saboteurs were trained. Although there were different views in the leadership of the Reich about their capacity, the chief of the Abwehr, V. Canaris, stated: "There are no scum, there are only shots".

Myth No. 5 Stepan Bandera himself fought against Hitler, so he was killed back in 1941. sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp(a similar myth - Bandera ceased to cooperate with the German occupation regime after 1941)

Two weeks after the capture of Lvov, the Nachtigall battalion, formed under the leadership of Bandera, turned the German rear into a field for their showdown with the Poles, which caused Hitler's extreme displeasure. And it's not that they felt sorry for some "Untermensch". The task of the General Staff of any belligerent country is to bring chaos behind enemy lines and vice versa, to ensure order in their own rear. In addition, the Germans believed that the population of the occupied countries should, with or without enthusiasm, work for the good of the Reich, and not lie with their throats cut in a ditch.

In addition, in an unknown direction (to the accounts of Swiss banks), a large amount of money allocated by German intelligence to finance the OUN leaked.

So, according to Lazarek: "S. Bandera received 2.5 million marks from the Germans, that is, as much as Melnik also receives", source - materials of the Nuremberg trial) and transferred to a personal account in a Swiss bank."

(Historical portraits: Makhno, Petlyura, Bandera. - K., 1990. - P. 24)

But that was not all - without the demand of the Germans, the Act on the proclamation of the Ukrainian state was adopted. The OUN hoped that the Germans would come to terms with this. An attempt to arbitrarily proclaim a state on the territory already occupied by German troops, where the latter had already suffered losses, while the OUN could not or did not want to organize a large-scale uprising in the rear of the Red Army in Western Ukraine, ended sadly for Bandera.

July 5, 1941 At the meeting, Adolf Hitler said: “Parteigenosse Himmler, machen Sie Ordnung mit diesen Bande! ” (Parteigenosse Himmler, clean up this gang!). Almost immediately, the Gestapo arrested S. Bandera, Ya. Stetsko, as well as about 300 members of the OUN. "Nachtigal" was urgently reorganized into a police battalion and transferred to Belarus to fight the partisans, and Bandera was taken under house arrest in Krakow, and then transferred to Sachsenhausen, to a kind of hotel, where high-ranking fascist accomplices were temporarily put into reserve.

The Bandera people were very worried:

“The Nazis threw hundreds of Ukrainian patriots into concentration camps and prisons. Mass terror began. In the Auschwitz concentration camp, the brothers of Stepan Bandera, Oleksa and Vasyl, were brutally tortured."

And no matter how the Bandera people insist, the story does not end there.

In 1944, Hitler removed Bandera from the reserve and included him in the Ukrainian National Committee, whose task was to organize the fight against the advancing Red Army.

“In early April 1945, Bandera was instructed by the Main Directorate of Imperial Security to gather all Ukrainian nationalists in the Berlin area and defend the city from the advancing Red Army units. Bandera created detachments of Ukrainian nationalists who acted as part of the Volkssturm, while he fled. He left the dacha of the 4-D department and fled to Weimar. Burlai told me that Bandera agreed with Danyliv on a joint transition to the side of the Americans.

And now let's give the floor to the Bandera people, but we want to know the opinion of both sides:

“Having felt the power of the UPA in their own skin, the Germans began to look for an ally in the OUN-UPA against Moscow. In December 1944, Bandera and several other members of the OUN-revolutionary were released. They were offered negotiations on possible cooperation. "Ukrainian statehood and the creation of the Ukrainian army as separate, independent from the German armed forces of an independent power. The Nazis did not agree to recognize the independence of Ukraine and sought to create a pro-German puppet government and Ukrainian military formations as part of the German army. Bandera resolutely rejected these proposals."

(Source - Stepan Bandera's article. Life and work.

Myth #6 About the Bandera brothers tortured in Auschwitz by the Germans.

The Bandera brothers died in Auschwitz in 1942 - they were beaten to death by Polish prisoners. Eye for an eye.

Myth No. 7 Bandera with the same dedication waged a desperate struggle against both Hitler's fascism and Stalin's reactionary-repressive regime.

I will first quote the text of the comrade, who very clearly and logically compared several facts, and then I will present several facts for justification. I repeat here and there.

"The current followers of Bandera sharply reject the cooperation of Bandera with the Germans and insist on their confrontation. There is even a flash of a figure of 800 Nazis killed in battles with the "UPA warriors" (in fact, the average Soviet partisan detachment had more accounts). But the German archives at the request of our veterans answer that they have no information about those who died at the hands of Bandera, as well as about these battles themselves.Some kind of theater of the absurd!It turns out that the Germans, with manic idiots, supply their enemies with money, equipment, weapons: more than 700 mortars, about 10 thousand easel and light machine guns, 100 thousand hand grenades, 12 million rounds of ammunition, etc. Moreover, they train foremen for the UPA at the training center in Neuhammer, and others, assigning them German military ranks.

No, the Germans certainly had some skirmishes with Bandera. It happened that the Germans acted as owners and punished them in a disciplinary manner: they put them in camps, even shot them. What do you want? The same "Volyn massacre", when Bandera in the summer of 1943. massacred all the Polish villages of Volhynia and thus disrupted the planned supply of food for the German army - a headache for the German quartermasters! The German neat people also looked askance at the bad habit of the Bandera people to clog wells with drinking water with corpses, etc.

"Supporters of the OUN, on the orders of Bandera, served in the German police, punitive battalions ... For example, the same Roman Shukhevych, who was one of the ministers of the Bandera government dispersed by the Germans, continued to serve the Germans in the Nachtigall battalion, then became one of the commanders of the punitive battalion SS Until December 1942, he earned two crosses and the title of captain of the SS for the successful suppression of the partisan movement on the territory of Belarus.

"The Germans gave the OUN-UPA 100,000 rifles and machine guns, 10,000 machine guns, 700 mortars, a lot of ammunition. Former Nazi Abwehr leaders Lahousen, Stolze, Lazarek, Paulus testified to this at the trial."

Myth No. 8 Bandera did not commit the atrocities that they are prescribed

This is such an absurd myth that it is enough just to give some of the names: the Lvov Jewish pogrom, the Volyn massacre, Babi Yar. And one more example, not so well-known, but painful because it is "everyday", "ordinary".

The affidavit of Herman Grebe, read out by US prosecutor Stari.

"On the night of July 13, 1942, all the inhabitants of the ghetto in the city of Rivne ... were liquidated ... Shortly after 10 p.m., the ghetto was surrounded by a large detachment of the SS and about three times as large a detachment of Ukrainian police. Groups of SS men and police broke into houses. People living there driven out into the street in the form in which they were caught.

People were evicted from their homes with such haste that in some cases small children were left in their beds. All night persecuted, beaten and wounded people moved along the illuminated streets. The women carried their dead children in their arms. Some children were dragged to the train by the arms and legs of their dead parents...

Soon the Ukrainian police broke into house 5 on Bangofstrasse, pulled out 7 Jews from there and dragged them to the ghetto...

“Two features are striking in this document: firstly, the ratio of SS men and Ukrainian policemen - the bulk of the killers were not Germans, but “fighters for Ukraine”; secondly, the main opponents of these “fighters” were children - the witness speaks of them constantly."

(Source - Nuremberg trials. Collection of documents, - V.2, S.500)

Myth No. 9 The atrocities that are prescribed to Bandera were committed by the NKDVs, disguised as Bandera to discredit the insurgent movement and deprive them of popular support.

How serious the situation with the spread of this lie is, is evidenced by the fact that the myth of “disguised enkavedeshniki” is enshrined in the so-called. "Professional Conclusion (Fahovy vysnovok) of the working group of historians to study the activities of the OUN-UPA", published in Ukraine in a mass circulation of 120,000 copies, and centrally distributed to all libraries, secondary and higher educational institutions. On October 14, 2005, at a meeting of the Government Commission, this "Vysnovok" was approved as an official assessment of the activities of the OUN-UPA. Here, in the argument, one can go in two ways - direct and indirect.

Direct - to understand all the intricacies of the information war. All this is discussed in the book The Great Slandered War-2 in the article by Oleg Rossov "The myth of disguised NKVDeshniks. Special groups of the NKVD in the fight against bandit formations in Western Ukraine." Or use the materials of the article.

Indirect - Bandera fought against the Soviet Union - a fact. They received money and weapons from the Germans - a fact. And they did not play toys with these weapons. They staged massacres - a fact. In order for all this to be done by the NKVD, it is necessary that the UPA did not exist at all. And there was one this NKVD, which ran everything. The situation in which disguised UPA organize massacres of the population with impunity, and the UPA, who see all this, suffer greatly and do nothing at the same time (or better, they follow and ask not to kill anyone) is simply outrageous drug addict nonsense.

Myth No. 10 The UPA was not convicted by the Nurgberg Tribunal, which is proof of their non-participation in the massacres and indicates their fight against Nazism.

The OUN is mentioned several times in the documents, but the activities of this organization simply did not fall under the charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Japanese war criminals, for example, were not tried in Nuremberg either. And Croatian Ustashe.

However, it does not follow from this that they did not commit crimes (and they did not write the book "The Devil's Kitchen"). But Bandera's followers continue to insist on this, as if it justifies everything. Probably because there is no statute of limitations for these crimes. The time of the Japanese has come (Japanese war criminals were tried later in 1946 by the Tokyo Military Tribunal. The Charter of the Tokyo Tribunal incorporated the most important provisions of the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal), not far off and them.

Myth #11 Final. They (Banedra) fought for the independence of Ukraine and the liberation of the Ukrainian people.

The Bandera people were an extremely small (permanent composition of 6.5 thousand) well-organized, armed, trained and motivated by their idea group of militants. Which during the occupation of Poland could not do anything (Bandera himself, until the capture of Poland by the Germans, was in a Polish prison for an attempt. By the way, the Germans released him). They were able to act in a serious way only when they found themselves the strongest ally in the face of Nazi Germany. They lived on their money, shot civilians with their weapons.

The Germans gave the OUN-UPA 100,000 rifles and machine guns, 10,000 machine guns, 700 mortars, a lot of ammunition. Former Nazi Abwehr leaders Lahousen, Stolze, Lazarek, Paulus testified at the trial.

(Source - materials of the Nuremberg trial)

Threats and lies recruited people into their ranks.

To ensure a massive influx of volunteers to the UPA in 1942. Shukhevych declared official war on both the Bolsheviks and the Germans. This was confusing, and many people, wanting to fight the Germans, joined Shukhevych’s detachments, which numbered up to 100 thousand people, and in fact it turned out that despite calls to fight both against the Bolsheviks and against the Germans, the leadership of the OUN-UPA directs its main efforts to fight the red partisans and the peaceful Polish population of Volhynia.

(Source - film Line of War. Shukhevych R.I. - leader of the OUN)

After the general appeal, in order to avoid mass outflows of people who joined the OUN and realized that they had been deceived, the OUN set one condition for the Germans - to keep the fact of cooperation between them secret.

Here is how the minister of the Bandera "government" "Gerasimovsky" (I. Grinyokh) wrote about this to the German command:

"The delivery of weapons and sabotage from the German side across the front line for the UPA units should be carried out according to the rules of conspiracy, so as not to give the Bolsheviks any evidence regarding the Ukrainians - allies of the Germans who remained behind the front line. Therefore, the OUN asks that negotiations, an agreement go on from the center and that the security police should be partners on the part of the Germans, as far as possible, since they are familiar with the rules of conspiracy.

(Source - the book "Without the right to rehabilitation", chapter R. Shukhevych, author of the chapter Poddubny L.A.)

Those who tried to resist were beaten and killed. Those who performed their duties with insufficient zeal were killed, along with the whole family.

In 1943, an order was given to "eliminate" deserters from the UPA and beat draft evaders with ramrods.

This is the struggle of a group of terrorists for power, and not for the unrecordedness of Ukraine. These are attempts by threats, weapons and massacres to force peaceful people to recognize their influence. They were remembered as the murderers of their own countrymen.

Bandera, of course, chose other words to justify:

"OUN, with about 20 thousand members, had a great influence on the Ukrainian population"(with weapons in their hands and with the support of the Nazis - ed.).

(Source article "STEPAN BANDER",

The number of people killed on the territory of Ukraine during the Second World War by the Nazis (including Bandera):

In Crimea, civilians were loaded onto barges, taken out to sea and sunk. Over 144,000 people were killed in this way.

At Babi Yar, near Kyiv, they shot over 100,000 men, women, children and the elderly. In this city in January 1942, after the explosion at the German headquarters on Dzerzhinskaya Street, the Germans arrested 1,250 old people, minors, women with babies as hostages. In Kyiv, they killed over 195,000 people.

In Rovno and in the Rivne region they killed and tortured over 100,000 civilians.

In Dnepropetrovsk, near the Transport Institute, they shot and threw alive into a huge ravine 11,000 women, old people and children.

In the Kamenetz-Podolsk region, 31,000 Jews were killed and destroyed, including 13,000 brought from Hungary.

At least 200,000 Soviet citizens were killed in the Odessa region.

In Kharkov, about 195,000 people were tortured, shot or strangled in "gas chambers".

In Gomel, the Germans rounded up local residents in prison, tortured them, and then brought them to the city center and publicly shot them.

(Source - materials of the Nuremberg trial)

Aren't there too many "dissenters" and those "on whom they had a great influence" killed? ...

And good. We decided to suddenly forget that the Banedrovites killed their countrymen. If they were fighting for an idea, wouldn't they team up with everyone who supports that idea? But no - back in 1940, the OUN split into two organizations, OUN-b (Bandera) and OUN-m (Melnikov).

But Banera's supporters, of course, put it differently: “There were internal conflicts in the organization: between the young, inexperienced, impatient and more experienced and reasonable, who went through the war and revolution, between the leadership of the OUN, living in comfortable conditions of emigration, and the bulk of the OUN members, who worked underground and police persecution."

(Source "STEPAN BANDERA",

Bandera "tried their hand" on the OUN-Melnikovites. Then, in a few months in 1940, the security service eliminated about 400 of its political opponents.

Then they will hunt and knock on each other in the Gestapo throughout the war.

Disagreements between members? Come on. 400 corpses - is it just a disagreement? Think about it - these are not losses for the entire period of the Second World War. These are the results of the work of several (!) months at a time when the war had not yet begun. This is how they treated "like-minded people." Or maybe it was something else? Maybe it was a struggle for power and political influence? For who will manage the German money? Maybe it's inevitable when you deceive people, saying that you are fighting for freedom and independence, but in reality everything turned out to be not quite so? This is pure politics. Otherwise, they would not have started to arrange a showdown among themselves, as they do with political competitors. This is what they do when they strive for power, and not when they save the people. But that's not all. In relations between the Bandera themselves, too, not everything was smooth.

In 1943, the edge wire assigned the following tasks to the Security Council:

"eliminate" deserters from the UPA and beat draft evaders with ramrods;

Continue to "control" the loyalty of the OUN members themselves.

In the summer of 1945, Bandera issued his famous thrice secret decree, which, in particular, spoke of the need "immediately and most secretly ... the aforementioned elements of the OUN and UPA (those who may surrender to the authorities) should be eliminated in two ways: a) send large and small UPA detachments to fight the Bolsheviks and create situations for them to be destroyed by the Soviets at their posts and "ambushes"("The earth accuses", p. 150). The rest were to be dealt with by the security service.

Now let's put these facts together.

They kill their countrymen and call it the liberation of the people.

They kill their like-minded people who have chosen a different leader, and call it the struggle for the independence of the country.

They kill and betray each other and this is called unity and brotherhood.

I can tell you what it's called. It's all summed up in one word - BETRAYAL.

Betrayal of the People.

Betrayal of the motherland.

Betrayal of the Idea.

A TRAITOR is worse than an ENEMY. The enemy has principles. The traitor has none. The enemy has values, the traitor's only value is his own skin.

The historian Boris Yulin wrote about this very intelligibly. Further quote:

“What is the act of betrayal? It lies in the fact that a citizen of the country deliberately goes into the service of the enemies of the country. Usually this is a transition to the side of the enemy during hostilities.

Since there will always be a moral monster who considers such an act reasonable, punishment for betrayal has always been provided in all countries. And rightly so, because we are talking about the survival of the country and the people. The destruction of traitors is like amputation for gangrene or removal of worms. There is no humanism here.

The act of betrayal is connected precisely with the consciousness of the action. That is, the person understands what he is doing.

A small nuance - there is no justification for betrayal. They try to find him only the same freaks as the traitor himself. For example, they attribute the fight against the regime to a traitor.”

For us, betrayal is also an act for which they do not forgive. There is no statute of limitations for him. And we will remember this when we go to the information barricades.

And we will remember if we happen to meet on the real ones.

Tsargrad dwelled on the problem of active cooperation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) with Nazi Germany during the Second World War and those atrocities that were carried out by Ukrainian nationalists in the service of Hitler in the occupied territory of the Soviet Union. However, the cooperation of nationally concerned Ukrainians with Nazi Germany is not limited to the units "Roland" and "Nachtigal", SS security battalions and the SS division "Galicia".

The main myth about the UPA

The cornerstone of Ukrainian propaganda is the myth that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) led by Dmitry Klyachkivsky and then Roman Shukhevych, which took shape in the autumn of 1942 - in the spring of 1943, allegedly fought on two fronts: on the one hand against the Soviet partisans, and subsequently regular units of the Red Army and units of state security agencies, and on the other hand against the German invaders. This myth appeared in the middle of the last century in the Ukrainian nationalist emigration, when the former Bandera tried in every possible way to rehabilitate themselves, creating the image of a kind of "fighters for an independent Ukraine" who fought against its enemies in the face of German Nazis and Soviet Communists. Naturally, Western propaganda, which actively used Ukrainian nationalists in the ideological struggle against the Soviet Union, strongly supported this approach, forgetting about the recent joint struggle with the USSR against Hitler. The modern propaganda of the Kyiv regime, which is carried out by the head of the so-called Ukrainian Institute of National Memory Vladimir Vyatrovich, with even greater zeal spins this myth, with the goal of discrediting the Victory in the Great Patriotic War in any way, denigrating the feat of true heroes and patriots and glorifying the traitors and punishers who committed military crimes on the orders of their Nazi masters.

So who did the UPA fight against?

The main evidence of lies and falsification by the UPA glourifiers are German archival documents, which do not at all confirm the facts of any major clashes between the Wehrmacht and Bandera, UPA sabotage against the German invaders. So who did the "Ukrainian rebels" fight against in 1943 - early 1944, when Western Ukraine was under German occupation? The main enemies of Bandera were Soviet partisans, Polish detachments of the Home Army, as well as their own ideologically incorrect comrades-in-arms - Melnikovites and Bulbovites (supporters of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists Andrei Melnik and Taras Bulba-Borovets). However, to a greater extent they succeeded in carrying out terror against the civilian Polish population, having perpetrated the Volyn massacre in the spring and summer of 1943, the victims of which were tens of thousands of people.

Since the beginning of 1944, when the liberation of the territory of Western Ukraine by the troops of the Red Army began, the UPA began direct cooperation with the Nazi special services. In particular, representatives of the OUN (B) are actively negotiating with the Abwehr and the SD on the supply of weapons to Ukrainian nationalists and joint military operations against the Red Army. On behalf of the OUN (B) Wire, the negotiations were carried out by the former military chaplain of the Nachtigall punitive unit, Greek Catholic priest Ivan Grinyokh.

In the spring and summer of 1944, the UPA launched an active struggle against the Soviet troops, carrying out terrorist attacks and sabotage, undermining lines of communication, attacking the Red Army and the NKVD troops. On February 29, 1944, near Rovno, Ukrainian nationalists fired on a motorcade in which the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, the illustrious General Nikolai Vatutin, was located. The commander was seriously wounded, from the consequences of which he soon died. On August 12, 1944, in the area of ​​​​Rava-Russkaya, the Banderites captured a Soviet ace pilot, a native of the Sumy region, Mikhail Likhovid. After brutal attempts, UPA militants burned him alive. Mikhail Likhovid was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

How Hitler's chief saboteur saved Bandera from the Red Army

The active interaction of Bandera with the Nazi secret services continued until the end of the Second World War. The Nazis obviously pinned considerable hopes on the Ukrainian bandit underground, connected with a serious undermining of the Soviet rear, and actively contributed to this. In December 1944, on the personal instructions of the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, Stepan Bandera was released from the concentration camp. The leader of the OUN (B) was sent to Krakow, Poland, where he, as part of the Abwehrkommando-202, trained saboteurs from nationalists sent by the UPA headquarters. Then the Germans threw these saboteurs into the Soviet rear.

When Krakow was surrounded by the Red Army in January 1945, Bandera was personally taken out by Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's main saboteur, who in September 1943 released the arrested Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This once again eloquently testifies to the importance the German masters attached to their Ukrainian wards.

War after war

They are now not the owner of either the Abwehr or the Gestapo,
The call signs were changed to English.

And in a blind frenzy they bow to the west,
They would have even with Lucifer against the USSR

(Igor Sivak)

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, Ukrainian nationalists continued to interact with the American and British intelligence services. The OUN-UPA bandit formations, fed from outside, continued to conduct active terrorist activities on the territory of Western Ukraine until the mid-1950s. Wherever the Bandera people appeared, they left terrible bloody traces, brutally cracking down on everyone who, in their opinion, collaborated with the Soviet government - from Soviet military personnel and Komsomol activists to those sent to Galician and Volyn villages in order to eliminate the illiteracy of teachers and even ordinary peasants who worked on collective farms.

According to Georgy Sannikov, a veteran KGB author of several books about the defeat of the OUN-UPA bandit underground, during 1945-1955, 25,000 Soviet military personnel, employees of state security agencies, police and border guards, as well as 32,000 representatives of Soviet and party activists, died in the fight against Bandera. At the same time, about 60 thousand members of gangs were liquidated, including the leaders of the OUN-UPA Roman Shukhevych, Dmitry Klyachkivsky, Petr Oliynyk, Nil Khasevich and others.

In the 1950s, under Nikita Khrushchev, many previously convicted members of the Ukrainian bandit underground were amnestied and returned to Western Ukraine. A considerable number of former Bandera and their accomplices then crawled into the Soviet party and state bodies. Rumor has it that one of these accomplices of Ukrainian nationalists in his youth was Lenya Kravchuk, a native of the Rivne region, who later became a prominent party official, one of the active participants in the collapse of the USSR and the first president of "square" Ukraine. In any case, the revival of Bandera in the early 1990s is largely a consequence of the Soviet national policy, which did not allow the Ukrainian monster to be strangled at the initial stage of its existence after emerging from the Austro-Hungarian test tube.

In the center, in a fascist uniform, sits the current hero of Ukraine
Stepan Bandera

Historical archives clearly and convincingly destroy the Maidan myths about the "hero of Ukraine" Stepan Bandera. Preferential imprisonment and honorary isolation of Bandera in the Zellenbau bunker at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp: "He could move freely around the camp, received parcels with food and money, had the right to correspond ... Bandera was released by the Germans themselves."

Two years ago, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) published in two volumes the collection “Ukrainian nationalist organizations during the Second World War. 1939-1945". The responsible compiler of the collection, Tatyana Tsarevskaya-Dyakina, spoke in an interview about the real activities of Bandera on the territory of Ukraine.

15 Largest Archives Against the Falsification of History

– Tatyana Viktorovna, how was the idea of ​​the collection born?

- In the late 90s, a wave of publications began, glorifying the nationalist movement in Ukraine. It increased sharply after 2004, when foreign grants poured into the country. The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, created on the initiative of Viktor Yushchenko, was especially zealous in this direction. There is no need to talk about the quality of these publications and monographs, but they had a result: in Ukraine they began to erect monuments to Bandera (pictured) and Shukhevych, to call their names after streets, to exalt members of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) as "fighters against fascism". In contrast to these monuments and many superficial scientific publications, we decided to document the activities of Ukrainian nationalist organizations during the Second World War.

- It seems that publications like yours are quite rare - both in terms of the number of documents submitted and the volume of work performed ...

– It really is. The book includes documents from 15 largest archives in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland and Belarus. We cleaned the translations very carefully (this is especially true for extracts from German documents) and tried not to allow any selectivity or negligence - we understood that we would be “eaten” for any inaccuracy. I will also add: we did not use in the collection common versions that roam the Internet. We do not consider copies from a copy to be a reliable source, we rely only on original documents.

– Which organizations were the most interesting for you?

- OUN (first of all, its radical wing, represented by Stepan Bandera) and the UPA, which was headed by Klim Savur, and then Roman Shukhevych. These were the most active driving forces during the war period. To better understand the history of the OUN, we also studied its activities in Poland before the outbreak of World War II. Pre-war documents are very important, which testify to the preparation of groups of Ukrainian nationalists for terrorist and sabotage activities on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as documents revealing the mechanisms of cooperation between the OUN and the UPA with Nazi Germany. The communication of these organizations with foreign "sponsors" in the post-war period is extremely interesting. Surprisingly, many documents were found about the activity of the UPA in Ukraine and Poland. And the program documents and instructions, the authors of which are Bandera and his supporters, are also extremely interesting and important, since they reveal the ideological background and the non-randomness of everything that is happening.

– What was the main idea and purpose of the OUN?

- They had one goal - the creation of an independent and conciliar Ukrainian state and the fight against its "enemies" - first with Poland, then with the "Muscovite Empire".

- Curious: this literally coincides with the theses of today's Ukrainian nationalists.

- Exactly. But the OUN members differed in their methods. In the spring of 1941, Stepan Bandera, together with his supporters, broke away from the OUN Melnyk, formed the radical wing of the OUN-B (“OUN-Bandera”), it was also called the “revolutionary OUN” - “OUN-R”). This happened at the II Great Gathering of Ukrainian Nationalists - it was there that the greeting with the words “Glory to Ukraine” - “Glory to the Heroes” was adopted as the organizational password of the OUN member (it replaced the traditional Western Ukrainian “Glory to Jesus Christ!”), Accompanied by throwing out hands like a Nazi ridge. The colors of the OUN flag - red and black - were also adopted there.

Melnik believed that through cooperation with Nazi Germany, in the event of her victory, it would be possible by political methods to achieve preferences for Ukraine within the framework of the new Europe. And the Bandera faction strove for an active revolutionary struggle, for terrorist actions that would hasten the "armed explosion" in Western Ukraine.

By the way, “Armed Explosion” (“Zbroyny Zriv”) is the name of the OUN-Bandera program document containing the organization’s action plan in the event of a war between Germany and the USSR. In principle, the OUN has been very "active" since its inception in 1929. There were also attacks on state institutions, and arson of the property of Polish landowners, and assassination attempts on government officials. And in 1933, when Bandera headed the Regional Executive in Western Ukraine, the use of terrorist methods in the practice of the OUN intensified.

"War" between Moscow and other powers, especially if it
be waged on Ukrainian soil, the OUN uses it as a convenient moment for
full flare-up of the liberation revolutionary struggle for
Independent Societal Ukrainian State

- It is known that in 1934 Stepan Bandera took part in the preparation of a terrorist attack, as a result of which the Polish minister Bronislaw Peratsky died ...

- Yes, and note: Bandera was convicted not as a political figure, but under a criminal article - for terrorist activities - bombs, political assassinations, robberies ... The Polish government even wanted to apply capital punishment to Bandera, but then they gave life. His methods, both before and after 1939, are just a collection of criminal articles. Incidentally, even Melnik, the head of the moderate wing of the OUN, accused Bandera of this. Bandera was originally an extremist and subsequently continued to be the head of the right-wing extremist wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - any violent actions were the norm for him.

"In April 1941, Bandera received 2.5 million marks from the Germans"

– But how did the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera intend to establish its power in Ukraine during the war, if Germany claimed it?

- They were not going to act in defiance of Germany, but intended to enter the country "on the shoulders" of the German army and establish their own order there, as they say, "under the guise". In fact, it was a gamble, and Bandera himself was not too sure of its success. They considered the war "a suitable situation" for "an armed uprising against Moscow and the creation of a Ukrainian state." And the countries leading the fight against Moscow were interpreted as "natural allies."

OUN leaflet: “For our independent movement we have
the most powerful and just protector of Germany and ADOLF HITLER,
powerful master of Europe, who, realizing a new order and division of the world,
appreciates the importance of the ethnographic feeling and national consciousness of every nation!”

– How was it implemented?

– A parallel should be drawn with today's events – everything was prepared very competently, and the schemes of action of radical Ukrainian nationalists have not changed much since then.

Since 1939, the OUN recruited groups of unemployed Ukrainians who came from Poland to Germany, a large number of yesterday's rural youth - unsettled, not adapted to anything. They conducted propaganda sessions aimed at involving young people in an active struggle for the independence of Ukraine, including with weapons in their hands, and at the same time used this contingent to collect and transmit information about the state of the border territories of the USSR to the Abwehr. Bandera knew his land, his compatriots well, and understood that the radical ideas of the OUN would allow recruiting supporters in huge numbers. All his slogans are very straightforward, simple, very intelligible propaganda. And she acted, because she was very much in line with the mood of the youth, who first lived under the Poles, then, albeit not for long, under the Soviets ... "We are the heirs of great traditions" - weapons in hand, and forward.

Where were these young people sent?

- Some of them underwent serious military and sabotage training in the camps of Brandenburg-800 (a structure controlled by the Abwehr). These camps existed under the cover of an auxiliary force for the mountain peasants (Bergbauernhilfe). Here, Ukrainian nationalists were taught, among other things, subversion, organizing arson - remember today's "Molotov cocktails". Particular attention was paid to the ability to conduct independent partisan operations, "built on cunning and surprise" - (we published all these documents in the above-mentioned collection). The rest were also trained and organized - they formed "marching groups", which then entered Ukraine along with the Germans. They were supposed to follow the German troops and immediately seize and organize the civil authorities in the field, controlled by the OUN.

That is, while the German army was moving on, fulfilling its tasks, a group of trained young people entered the Ukrainian towns, explained that “the power is now ours”, quickly raised the Ukrainian flag, “trident”, organized the simplest local self-government.

- I remember the seizures of regional administrations in Ukraine in January-February of this year ...

- All kinds of administration were created - from the burgomaster of the town, the headman in the village to the leader in the field of culture. Don't forget about the "people's militia". And so the "marching groups" rolled in a shaft from west to east. The scope of actions was impressive - they reached Dnepropetrovsk ... It was a planned, carefully prepared action. It is clear that you cannot organize this in a couple of months - it took at least a year and a half or two to develop and prepare.

Who funded the training? Was there German money involved?

Yes, there is absolute evidence for this. The OUN was in constant search of a strong foreign policy partner - another characteristic feature of Ukrainian nationalism - Germany became such a partner at that time.

The fact that she financed Melnyk's OUN is well known. Bandera always tried to disown this. However, there are testimonies confirming this. head of the Abwehr-2, Erwin Stolze, who directly oversaw the "work" of Ukrainian nationalists. His words about "financing the created underground in order to organize subversive activities" are quoted quite often.

We also published the protocols of the interrogation of the deputy head of the 2nd department of Abverstelle Krakow, Joseph Lazarek, who testifies: “In April 1941, I learned from Ernst zu Aikern that Bandera received 2.5 million marks from the Germans, that is, as much as Melnik received in year that the Germans accepted the conditions for supplying them with weapons. Bandera, in turn, undertook to give his people for training in sabotage work in German schools, translators for German headquarters and intensify sabotage, intelligence and insurgent work in the Soviet rear. Subsequently, all clauses of the agreement, both by the Germans and Bandera, were carried out. In particular, the Bandera [given] their cadres to staff the schools of saboteurs.”

- What allows Ukrainian neo-Nazis today to assert that Bandera and his supporters fought heroically against Nazi Germany?

- It was a temporary break in relations. Indeed, on June 29, 1941, somewhat ahead of the first units of the Wehrmacht, the Ukrainian Nachtigall battalion under the command of Shukhevych entered Lviv, followed by the Lviv marching group led by Yaroslav Stetsko. Stetsko urgently convened the National Assembly, at which on June 30 the act of re-establishing the independent Ukrainian state was proclaimed (it, in fact, lasted only two days). Representatives of the Abwehr were present in the hall, who doubted what was happening, but did not actively resist. And the occupation administration, the Gestapo and the SD arrived in Lviv only a few days later.

On all leaflets and banners of this time is next: "Glory to Bandera!",
“Long live the German people, Heil Hitler!”, “Glory to the heroes!”

- How did the Germans react to the proclamation of the Ukrainian state, because it is obvious that for Germany, Ukrainian nationalists were temporary allies and second-class people?

- Hitler categorically did not recognize this independent republic. Bandera had to explain, justify. There are protocols of negotiations, or rather, "conversations" dated July 3, 1941, to which the German representatives summoned Stetsko and Bandera. The main question was: “Who even gave you permission to do this?”

Bandera's position was as follows: "No one forbade me, so we did it." He assured that the OUN members "sincerely cooperated with all German authorities in all respects", "did not intend to act contrary to the interests of Germany" - part of his people, as agreed, fought in the ranks of the German Wehrmacht, part - acted in the rear of the Bolshevik troops, and the third part - in the Soviet army for the sake of its weakening - I quote documents.

The Germans demanded that Stetsko and Bandera give up arbitrariness, but Bandera persisted, naively hoping that Germany would change its position on Ukrainian statehood. As a result, he was sent to Berlin under house arrest.

- Modern Bandera people usually interpret this behavior in his favor - as inflexibility in the struggle to build an independent Ukrainian state ...

- You know, even the Germans themselves wrote about Bandera as a cunning and unprincipled fanatic who will stop at nothing and is ready to sell and change everyone and everything if necessary - this is in the collection. Already in 1940-41, the Germans did not have any illusions about him.

- How did events develop after the arrest of Bandera and a number of his supporters?

– In Berlin, he, like Stetsko, continued to write explanatory notes to all German authorities, arguing that the Ukrainian state in the East would benefit Greater Germany – verbose, high-flown, with historical reminiscences… All these documents also exist. However, it was already too obvious to the Germans that the OUN-B was not subordinate to them.

As a result, on September 15, Bandera was placed in prison, and in the 42nd year he ended up in a concentration camp, in Sachsenhausen, and sat there until September 30, 1944, when he was released by the Germans themselves. True, he sat on preferential terms - some researchers call his imprisonment in the Zellenbau bunker, rather, "honorable isolation." For some reason they were reserved - he, like Stetsko, and Stakhiv, and Lebid, and other Bandera people, could move freely around the camp, received parcels with food and money, had the right to correspond ...

- And even, they say, he had the right to leave the camp in order to contact the secret OUN-UPA and the Friedenthal castle (200 meters from the "Zellenbau"), in which the school of intelligence and sabotage personnel of the same OUN-b was located? ..

– I didn’t raise these documents on purpose, so I can’t talk about it in detail. However, I will say that the image of a martyr, which arises immediately at the mention of Sachsenhausen, and which is actively exploited by the current followers of Bandera, does not correspond to reality.

- Are Bandera's signatures on criminal orders?

- Bandera acted quite competently - especially he did not leave his signatures anywhere. All orders were either issued on behalf of the OUN, or signed by Stetsko as the chairman of the government of the "Ukrainian State".

Yes, it is impossible to present the order on mass terror signed by him. But note: Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky also did not sign a single death sentence. And you will not find Hitler's signature on some tough orders such as the extermination of the Jews. People of this level initially did not leave any traces. What I saw were some letters, notes, but by no means orders.

Even, for example, the cover letter to the OUN-B memorandum sent to Hitler on June 23, 1941, is signed by the head of the Political Department of the OUN V. Stakhiv, beginning it like this: of a nation victoriously fighting for the reorganization of Europe, a memorandum of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists regarding the solution of the Ukrainian question.

Of course, the political and military program of the OUN, drawn up before the start of World War II with the expectation of a war between Germany and the Soviet Union, could not have been drawn up without the participation of Bandera. For example, the same instruction “Struggle and activities of the OUN during the war” dated May 1941, which states that “national minorities are divided into: a) friendly to us, that is, members of all enslaved peoples; b) hostile to us, Muscovites, Poles, Jews," who "are destroyed in the struggle, except for those who defend the regime ...".

Or: “Our power must be terrible for its opponents. Terror for "foreign enemies and their traitors." “Foreigners”, by the way, are “different Asians with whom Moscow colonizes Ukraine with the intention of creating a national striped strip in Ukraine.”

From the book “Struggle with Moscow”: “Moscow must perish! -
white or red, royal, Soviet, proletarian, orthodox
or godless - all the same! “Ukraine must be free!”

- And how did the OUN establish "order" in Ukraine?

- For the first two or three months of the joint advance to the East, the OUN-Bandera quite successfully cooperated with the Germans. Moreover, at first, many OUN members on the ground directly appealed to German structures (there are many documents), including representatives of the Abwehr - they acted together. Relations began to deteriorate when the Germans began to create their own administration on the ground and try to eliminate the Ukrainian one. Including, they tried to subdue the “people's militia”, whose duties, by the way, included the cleansing of Ukrainian lands from communists, NKVD workers, Jews, “foreigners”, etc. This was not so easy for the Germans, especially since initially the OUN was another command was given: to hide the weapons and uniforms of the retreating Red Army, to stock up for ourselves ...

At the beginning of September 1941, the Germans disbanded Roland and Nachtigall, for the same reason - they realized that these Ukrainian battalions were not particularly subordinate to them. Someone went into translators, someone signed an annual contract to serve the Germans. Including, by the way, the current Hero of Ukraine and the “fighter against fascism” Shukhevych, who received the rank of officer of the Hitler Wehrmacht.

Then came the arrests of especially active persons from the OUN, approximately from the end of 1941. And in the second half of 1942, in connection with the growing terror against the OUN-B, calls began for the creation of a national Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), headed by Klim Savur, and after his death - by Shukhevych.

- Now the heirs of Bandera are proud that they resisted the Germans with weapons in their hands ...

– The policy of the OUN changed all the time. In 1941 they greeted Hitler, the names of Hitler and Bandera were side by side on all posters. At the end of 1942, a period of struggle against the Germans began, which today allows some to call the OUN-UPA "heroic fighters against fascism" (they even have a book, they say, about this was recently published - "100 UPA battles"). It even happened that UPA detachments united with Soviet partisans in the fight against a common enemy (there is evidence of a Belarusian partisan and intelligence officer Brinsky), despite the complete discrepancy between the main goals ...

- Bandera was allowed to correspond - is it possible to say that at that time he continued to actively influence the actions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army from the camp?

- No, it was impossible - just before that, he was able, so to speak, to put the job well. But he had nothing to do with the struggle of the UPA with the forces of Nazi Germany.

- And in the future, the OUN-UPA continued to cooperate with the German Nazis?

- At the beginning of 1944, it became clear that the Red Army was moving inexorably to the west. And the UPA changes tactics: they again go to negotiations with the Germans. We found many documents about negotiations between UPA commanders of various levels with the Germans on joint actions - either the extradition of Soviet paratroopers, then help in the fight against Soviet partisans, then some kind of sabotage ... (In March-April 1944, negotiations with the Germans come official representative of the OUN-B I. Grinyokh). And Germany begins to grab any proposals, especially since the UPA is a real force. In exchange, she supplied the UPA with weapons, ammunition, and transferred German reconnaissance groups across the front line for contact. What is there to talk about if not about cooperation with the Nazis? Obvious, documented collaboration.

Nevertheless, it was impossible to seriously negotiate with Bandera - they instantly changed allies depending on the political situation, and today this must also be borne in mind. And this applies not only to relations with the Germans, but also with the Poles.

Ukrainian woman blesses a German soldier

- The year 1943 was marked for the UPA by another important series of events - the so-called Volyn massacre began in the summer ...

- At the end of 1942, relations with the Poles had already reached such an intensity that the UPA began to draw up lists of who should be destroyed. The Poles followed the Komsomol and the Communists. How do Ukrainians explain this? They say: "They also cut us" ... And this is also true. It is worth understanding: there were no white and fluffy ones there. On both sides, they were already completely mentally unstable people.

The sight of blood excited so much that it came to incredible horror - for example, the Ukrainian himself paints that he put children's heads on a pike and ran around the village with it ... Can you imagine this? He writes about it as a feat! We have published this too... All murders, as evidenced by the materials, are characterized by indescribable sadism - women impaled, men torn apart by horses, small children with their mouths cut from ear to ear, with the inscription on a piece of paper: "Poland from sea to sea "...

- It was the UPA that was famous for such atrocities?

- First of all, the UPA, although and although the Poles also slaughtered the Ukrainians, locked them in churches and set them on fire. But among the Poles, scattered bandit groups acted in this way, and the UPA was still a whole army. In 1943, she already had a commander-in-chief - Klim Savur, there was a very clear organization, iron discipline, well-organized communications, training of recruits, propaganda at a high level ... And even her own security service, which monitored any manifestation of dissent.

They even had a financial department - people who collected pennies from the population, counted, hid in caches. All members of the OUN-UPA paid monthly dues. The amounts were strictly regulated, monthly financial reports were written ... There was also the concept of "sympathy" - those who sympathized, they also paid. Something like collecting tribute - the army fought for their independence.

OUN instruction for the population: how to gain the trust of a Red Army soldier

- Reminds today: "The object is under the protection of the Right Sector" ...

- Yes, and they followed it strictly. In the UPA, a very rigid internal system of punishments was generally developed. The highest measure - for drunkenness, theft, a riotous lifestyle, for attempts to desert, for failure to report about desertion ... They also monitored the population - in case of the slightest disobedience, they were severely punished - for example, with sticks. They drove a person through the line - 40-50 blows were the norm, but sometimes the guilty person received 150, and after that a few survived.

Widespread surveillance, denunciation, iron discipline - it was an extremely tough organization, from which it was very difficult to escape, membership - for life. Moreover, the relatives of the UPA fighters were also under control - the threat to life hung over the whole family. The same applied to the civilian population.

- Some Ukrainian researchers are now writing that all this is justified by wartime - and in the USSR, they say, much more people were destroyed ...

- Understand, for the UPA these were not spontaneous, not random, but programmatic things. Everything was very clearly described in the documents, regulated - how to behave, whom and in what case to destroy. Endless execution orders were written. It reached the point of absurdity when people (this was already after the war) were sentenced to death on suspicion: “Twice in a month I went to the district. She is an agent of the NKVD... And even if we are talking about special wartime laws, why were whole families cut out, up to babies - for example, families of front-line soldiers? Where did you see this under Soviet power? The independent Ukrainian state is an idol for the sake of which they destroyed their own people.

Announcement in the city of Khyriv - a standard form of execution, where the name of the victim fits

American sponsors of Bandera

Why did the Germans release Stepan Bandera?

- At the beginning of the 44th year, one of the leaders of the OUN-Bandera, Ivan Grinyokh, got in touch with the Nazis, and he set one of the conditions for cooperation between the OUN and Germany - to make life easier for all arrested OUN members, up to the release of Bandera.

By the way, a little later, the UPA tries to establish contact with everyone indiscriminately - in this sense, the OUN-UPA was distinguished by amazing unscrupulousness. They dramatically change their attitude towards the Poles, go to the Craiova Army with proposals for a joint fight against the Red Army. They are trying to negotiate with various armed formations of the Slavic part of Europe in order to unite against a common enemy - the Red Army. And in January-March 1945, representatives of the UPA entered into negotiations with the Soviet government. There were at least two meetings where they tried to agree on how to stop the bloodshed. They asked to involve prominent Ukrainian cultural figures in the dialogue. In particular, the writer Andrei Golovko went to the talks.

Did Bandera also participate in them?

- So Bandera was all the time abroad, he led from behind the cordon! He did not appear in his beloved Ukraine ... He generally tried never to get into the thick of the fight. Svyaznoy informed him about the negotiations, but, judging by the fact that after two meetings, the negotiations stopped, Bandera was against contacts with the Soviet Union. Politically, he, like other leaders of the OUN who were in Germany, benefited from the continued active work of the UPA in favor of the Nazis. The larger they were, the more weapons and any possible assistance could be obtained from Germany (and not only). Finding new supporters in the post-war world who were ready to support the struggle of the UPA was the task of the OUN and Stepan Bandera.

And the UPA continued to operate in Ukraine until 1954, when its last leader, Vasyl Kuk, was arrested. By the way, he died only in 2007. He sat in the camps, was released, lived in Ukraine, collected materials about the UPA in the archives, wrote a number of studies on the topic.

– Why was it so difficult to deal with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army after the war?

- First of all, because until 1947, inclusive, they were supplied with weapons and assistance from abroad. After the war, Bandera quickly got his bearings and began to seek assistance from the Western powers. American sponsors. Do not forget about the huge Ukrainian diaspora in the States and Canada - they have always provided support too. In fact, these were illegal armed formations, but very large-scale, covering a huge number of areas, perfectly organized, with a very clear structure, up to "fours" - "fives" - small groups. As messengers they used girls, teenagers who moved freely between villages...

- And today, as we know, young girls went to the Kyiv chambers to “check on” the Berkut soldiers, and when they found out where they were, they called the Right Sector phones ...

– By the way, very often children were also involved as messengers. There was an active correspondence - I did not even expect that so many materials from the UPA would be preserved in the archives. When the Red Army garrisons were still standing, it was a little quieter, and then the appointed Soviet administration and law enforcement agencies were simply afraid to travel around the villages and farms - they sat in the regional centers. Although the UPA also attacked the regional centers. And the population was generally mortally intimidated, and therefore did not give any information. There were caches everywhere in the forests and settlements, Bandera's "eyes and ears" looked out from everywhere, and people were afraid that their family might not meet the next morning. When at night they can come to you at any moment - the neighbor pointed at you ...

– How has the attitude of ordinary Ukrainians towards the UPA changed?

- At first, of course, they welcomed them, especially since the propaganda was at the highest level. And then there was such fear that it eclipsed everything. After all, the Bandera people were engaged in demonstrative intimidation - they hung on gates, on trees, threw them into wells, tortured ... all this is described in the collection, and I don’t recommend reading it at night, it’s just scary. After 1945, front-line soldiers returned to Western Ukraine, and in fear for their families, they hid that they had awards and fought in the Red Army. And post-war Ukraine had to be restored, mobilization for work began. Naturally, the UPA and the OUN were categorically in favor of sabotaging any work "for the Soviets." Plus sabotage - blowing up oil fields, attacking small regional towns, destroying communications ...

In fact, it was a war with its own population, that's the worst thing. This total horror continued until the end of 47-48. That is, imagine: from 1939 to 1948 - for 9 years - people lived in constant fear. During this time the children grew up. This horror was fixed in the minds of the people very strongly.

- But why, in this case, is there no mass inoculation against the Bandera ideology in Western Ukraine?

- I think the point is that they have always paid great attention to brainwashing, especially in the last 20 years. Propaganda work did not stop until 1954 - numerous leaflets, appeals. And also falsifications.

“It’s also normal practice today. How common were they?

“At least I can tell you about two completely official fakes. This is the order of the NKVD of the USSR on the total eviction of all Ukrainians to Siberia - with a number, with a date, everything is as it should be ... Such orders were distributed in the form of leaflets. In the second half of the 90s, Ukrainians even published this document as real, but then they decided to quietly forget about it. And we discovered the second fake while preparing the collection in the archives of the Ministry of Defense - the decision of the Council of People's Commissars on the eviction of all Ukrainians to Yakutia. But this allowed the UPA to take the position: "We are fighting for you so that you are not evicted." Thus, cooperation with the Soviet authorities progressed very poorly. And today, mass propaganda and falsifications again lead to a flurry of Russophobic sentiments in Ukraine.

Burn, crush, kill

- It turns out that the essence of the Ukrainian nationalist movement remains largely the same today?

- Exactly so, and therefore its character and ideological roots are incredibly important to understand. Look: looking for a foreign partner in an effort to get weapons and funding, preparing groups for terrorist and sabotage activities, a rigid structure, a powerful propaganda machine, calls for self-sacrifice on the verge of a death cult, fueling people's dissatisfaction with provocations (and armed groups are already at the ready) - all as in the days of Bandera... After all, where did such an unexpected readiness of the Maidan to burn, smash, and kill come from?

- Many were struck by the rapid “evolution” of the intelligentsia, well expressed in the enthusiastic confession of one of the Automaidan leaders, Sergei Poyarkov (“Gordon Boulevard No. 8 (460) February 2014). From condemning the methods of the Right Sector, they quickly moved on to a friendly and even admiring one: “Now I regularly communicate with Yarosh, and he looks at me with a smile of the Cheshire Cat when I confess: “Dima, I was your opponent recently!... And now I understand that Molotov cocktails are much more effective! For some time now, the burning Berkut has not caused me purely human sympathy ... "

– The identity of the script, of course, is amazing. But what development will it take in modern conditions?

- You explained that it is impossible to negotiate with such people. What happens - you can stop this force only by force?

- At the end of the collection, we published a memorandum from Beria, addressed in 1953 to Molotov. In it, Beria admitted: we made a mistake - we had to look for other ways ... In particular, we should fight against the nationalist Ukrainian underground and its armed gangs not by “using KGB military operations”, but mainly by “undercover and operational methods”. It was not necessary to allow forcible Russification, to plant "proven party members" on the ground, it was necessary to work more with local activists in order to understand the specifics of the region. It was very important, wrote Beria, to listen in time to the needs of the population ... I think we need to listen to his words.

- What did you mean when you said about the cult of death among Bandera? Are they Christians?

- The documents of the OUN-UPA say a lot about calling to a higher goal, about self-sacrifice. Take, for example, the famous Decalogue of 1929 - "10 commandments of the Ukrainian nationalist" - it's just a fanatic's Bible: "I am the spirit of the eternal element ...!" – “You will receive the Ukrainian state or die fighting for it”, “Avenge the death of the great knights”, “Do not hesitate to do the most dangerous work, if the case requires it”, “With hatred and reckless struggle you will accept the enemies of your Nation”, “Not a request , neither threats, nor torture, nor death will force you to betray the secret. This is a very strange Christianity - with its non-Christian commandments ...

Life as a heroic feat, death in the struggle for the Ukrainian state, the cult of death, the cult of heroes are the most important elements of Bandera's ideology. The Heavenly Hundred is a continuation of this OUN cult. Today, Bandera's followers, in fact, turn to the grandchildren of the people they killed with the words: “Yes, your relatives suffered, but these were not in vain, because the UPA fought for our independence. And we have finally reached it! And now we have to defend it…”

– Probably, as in the past, this idea fits especially well on the soul of young people who are not yet filled with anything…

- You know, if you look at the protocols of interrogations, all Bandera's supporters were really very young - 20-25 years old. When they were 14-15, they were inspired with the idea of ​​a heroic struggle for the prosperity of the Ukrainian state. The OUN paid great attention to the education of youth, as well as to propaganda literature - there are a lot of documents to confirm it.

The words of the Metropolitan of Galicia Andrey Sheptytsky, written back in 1934 on the death of the director of the Babiy gymnasium, are very accurate - he was killed on the orders of Stepan Bandera: rejoice in such a profitable life.

The interview was conducted by Victoria Grigorova, Federal Investigation Agency FLB.ru, especially for Top Secret. Read the offline version in "Top Secret" No. 4, 2014.

Electronic version of the collection “Ukrainian nationalist organizations during the Second World War. 1939-1945" posted on the website of the Federal Russian Agency ("Rosarchiv"): http://archives.ru/press/12-11-12-sbornik.shtml#sb

Documents for the above

Extract from the report of the OUN marching group on the organization of self-government in the village of Mlyny. (June 25, 1941, Report K 056).
“We are creating a police force that will help remove the Jews and protect the population. These dead and the whole village, with a procession, met the Germans, and now they are upset ... The police will help them restore order. Father Sogor Lev has already organized the militia, has the authority signed by the OUN for this, and the village accepted it. So let them come here to meet the police, they will eliminate these Jews…”
CDAVO of Ukraine. F. 3833. Op. 1. Ref. 12. Ark. 10. Copy. Per. from Ukrainian language.

Special report by T.A.Strokach and A.Martynov on the formation of the Ukrainian National Army by the OUN Wire in Volhynia and Polissya and armed clashes between Ukrainian nationalists and Poles (April 21, 1943)
The main task of the Ukrainian army is to make a revolution in Ukraine. First of all, to occupy all the cities and railway junctions ... Along with this, Ukrainian nationalists carry out atrocious reprisals against the Polish population, setting the task of completely destroying the Poles in Ukraine.
In the Tsumansky district of the Volyn region, hundreds of nationalists were ordered to destroy the Poles by April 15, 1943 and burn all their settlements. On March 25, the population was destroyed and settlements were burned: Zaulek, Galinuvka, Maryanivka, Perelysyanka and others. On March 29, 18 Poles were hacked to death in the village of Galinowka, the rest went into the forest. In this village, his wife, a member of a Ukrainian organization, brought Bandera to the Pole doctor SHElkin, who cut off the doctor's ears, tore out his nose, and cut his body into pieces. In with. Pendyki shot up to 50 people. Poles.
In with. Verdche - Big local nationalists hanged the teacher and strangled her children.
Fleeing from the atrocities of the nationalists, the Poles are concentrated in large camps guarded by local Polish partisan detachments.
CDAGO of Ukraine. F. 1. Op. 23. Ref. 523. Ark. 43-46. Script.

Agent report of the Intelligence Department of the TsSHPD about the armed detachments of Ukrainian nationalists (August 16, 1943 - Entry No. 5830)
"In the area of ​​Zap. In Ukraine, in addition to the “Benderites”, “Bulbovites”, there are “Zelenovtsy” and “Sokirniki”. They are allegedly a kind of Ukrainian nationalists, they operate in organized groups. "Zelenovtsy" allegedly arose under the owls. authorities from the social alien element fought against the owls. party activists, collective farmers and Jews ... Used by the Germans for espionage. Now these groups are partly in the “Benderites” and partly operate independently in the forests.
"Sokirniki" ... are engaged in robbery of the population, mainly Poles. The name "sawkirniki" is associated with their methods of killing with axes. The nickname was given to them by the population. Both groups have close ties with each other and are fighting the partisans.
Right: D. Emlyutin.”
RGASPI. F. 69. Op. 1. Ref. 1033. L.4. Script. Manuscript.

From the materials of the Eastern Section of the Department of Information and Press of the Delegation of the Government of the Commonwealth on the attack by Ukrainian nationalists on Polish villages in Volhynia (not earlier than September 10, 1943)
“In Zagaitsy, the Polish population was destroyed, among others the Misyur family, whose daughter recently converted to Orthodoxy. Her own husband, an Orthodox Ukrainian, betrayed her to bandits as a Polish woman...
... In Volodymyr Volynsky, in the church during the service, all the Poles who were there were killed. They killed with knives, axes, sticks. Some of the severely maimed but surviving children were brought to Lvov.
In a village near Podkamenya, a Uniate priest handed out leaflets calling for the killing of Poles. All murders are characterized by indescribable sadism. Small children with their mouths cut from ear to ear, with the inscription on a piece of paper: "Poland from sea to sea." Women impaled, men torn apart by horses. Chopping off before death all the limbs in turn.
… Help can go in two ways: to get people out of there, to send them money. Both of these are within our power. It is only about means and speed of action, because the latest news is more and more terrible.
November 1942, outskirts of Dzumsk:
... Konty - after torture they killed a child, cut his mouth from ear to ear, and between the eyes they nailed a piece of paper "Poland from sea to sea" with a nail.
Khorynka - pits were dug behind this village, they put the Poles in a row, twisted their arms at the elbows and tortured them. Then everyone was shot.
Mizoch - 170 families, that is, about 800 people were killed at the end of August this year.
Shpikolosy - as a result of brutal murders, the Germans burned this village. There, Ukrainians carried Polish children hung on pitchforks.
Pishtychi - Gzhondkovskaya, who was running away after the village, was caught up and killed after being tortured. They found her with her belly open.
Rybcha - the whole Polish village is still defended - they have weapons. The attack was repulsed a few days ago. The Germans forbade them to leave for Kremenets. Waiting without hope of salvation...
... Kremenets - from September 1 to September 7, the Ukrainian delegation went to the Germans demanding that the Germans finish off the Poles or give the Ukrainians complete freedom in this direction. For this, they promised to give contingents and people to the army.
AAN, DR, sign. 202/III/200, no. 32-35. Copy. Translation from Polish
Published facsimile: Volyn, Eastern Galicia. 1942-1944. Guide. T.1. Warsaw; Kyiv, 2003. Appendix No. 14 (page w / n)

Protocol of interrogation of OUN member F.S. Sidorchuk on the structure and functions of the Security Service of the UPA (January 23, 1945)
“If we talk about the methods and organization of intelligence work (in particular, in the regional referentries of the Security Service (SB)), then they can be characterized as follows: agents among the population are recruited through threats, blackmail and provocation, an agent who does not represent for one reason or another reports to the Security Council (no matter whether he received the assignment or not) are destroyed along with the family as suspicious in connection with the Soviet authorities or as a direct traitor;
Terror, which is widely used by the Security Council against the population showing anti-OUN sentiments, especially infanticide, is used by the Bolsheviks with great success for their propaganda purposes against the OUN and the UPA. Thus, the Security Service harms the cause and interests of the organization. Therefore, it is strictly forbidden for Security Service employees to torture and kill children under the age of 12 under pain of prosecution. Children older than this age should be destroyed in accordance with the revolutionary conscience.
GA RF. F. R-9478. Op. 1 D. 398. L. 76-88. Certified copy.

Message from an unidentified person about the events in the Hutsul region after the arrival of the Hungarian troops and the activities of the local OUN cell (Drohobych, July 30, 1941).
“The complete disarmament of the Ukrainian police in Ukrainian villages in the Hutsul region is taking place in two or three villages per district. Most of all, the population and the Ukrainian police are offended by the fact that the Germans set the communists, Jews and Poles, who were hardly found through the forests, free, showing them to go where they want. This happens even very often (1-2 times a week). »
CDAVO of Ukraine. F. 3833. Op. 1. Ref. 15. Ark. 74-75. Copy. Per. from Ukrainian language.

From the political report of the Political Directorate of the head of the 1st Belorussian Front S.F. Galadzhev:
Of the captured trophy documents, the OUN order for 1944 draws attention ... Along with intelligence work, the order provides for the creation of terrorist groups in settlements to kill leading party and Soviet workers, with the involvement of girls in these groups. Paragraph 7 of the order says:
"... Create terrorist groups of brave beautiful girls with the task of eliminating responsible people by position, including the NKVD, throwing grenades into certain apartments ..."
CA MO RF. F.32. Op. 11289. D. 577. L. 18-27. Script.

Certificate of the Head of the Ukrainian Headquarters of the Partisan Movement and Commissar of State Security T.A. Strokach on strengthening the training of UPA personnel ... (September 29, 1944)
According to the documents of the "SB" "UPA" (serving security), at our disposal, the nationalists, on direct orders from above, massively destroy the Polish and Jewish population, as well as Ukrainians who have adopted the Ukrainian faith or are in ties with the Poles ...
... in the report of the referent of the SB "ZhBURT" it is indicated:
"Earlier," SB "issued an order - to secretly destroy all non-specialist Jews, so that the Jews and even our people do not know, but spread propaganda that he went to the Bolsheviks."
There are also cases when nationalists display terrorist activities in relation to the Red Army:
On the night of January 9, 1944 in the village. Belavushka (65 km northeast of Rovno), the nationalists slaughtered 15 Red Army soldiers, and in the village. Moskvin ... poisoned 30 Red Army soldiers of the 181st Infantry Division.
CDAGO of Ukraine. F. 1. Op. 22. Ref. 75. Ark. 94-95. Script.

Political report of S.S. Shatilov to A.S. Shcherbakov on the activities of Ukrainian nationalists in the Western regions of Ukraine (August 11, 1944)
On August 10, the bandits took a girl, a typist of the military department of the 2nd Air Army, Elena PONEVINA, into the forest. There they raped her, carved stars on her arms and on her chest, wrote “Russia” on her stomach and threw her bound in the forest.
CA MO RF. F.32. Op. 11289. D. 588. L. 489-489v. Script.

Political report of the head of the political department of the Kyiv Military District Lukashuk A.S. A.S. Shcherbakov about the Bandera raid on the district Gorodnitsy of the Zhytomyr region (February 12, 1945)
“Lieutenant Filimonov was in the apartment. Hearing the shots, he quickly dressed and ran out into the street with a machine gun, where he resisted ... His wife and 4-year-old child were in the apartment, whom the Banderaites brutally killed and cut up their corpses ... The Banderaites were in Gorodnitsy for about 2 hours. They burned the building of the district military department, the NKVD, the NKGB, the district executive committee, the Post Office, the People's Court, the base of the district consumer union, and also partially destroyed the building of the State Bank branch, the editorial office of the district newspaper and the Promkombinat ... "
CA MO RF. F.32. Op. 11289. D. 742. L. 20-21. Script.

Political report of the head of the political department of the Ternopil regional military enlistment office Varavka "On the actions of Bandera gangs in the Ternopil region" (March 25, 1945)
“... In the KOROPETSKY district, a gang of up to 150 people attacked the village of Ust-Zelenoye ... set fire to the village council and the building of the NKVD RO, captured Lieutenant NESTERENKO, an operative of the NKVD RO, whom they subjected to brutal torture and tortured (they twisted their arms and legs and cut open their stomach).”
CA MO RF. F.134. Op. 13289. D. 490. L. 58-59 (with ob.). Script.

Organizational report of the head of the Skob subdistrict Yevgen on the training of personnel for the UPA, the situation in the area of ​​operation in November 1943, relations with the Poles, Soviet partisans, Germans (December 9, 1943).
"Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!
… IV. SB Network (Security Services).
Referentura S.B. from the point of view of intelligence and political activity, it looks very catastrophic ....
one). People are stopped and beaten on the roads, very often our contacts.
2). In the district of Ch. 4, the owner who was carrying them was beaten and lost his way;
3) In this area in the village of Ch.2, there was such a case that our combat group broke down the door of the village for the fact that this village turned to our propagandist with the words “March, squalor”,
4) In district Ch.1, the district special officer with his subordinates came to the wedding, which was played with music and brutally dispersed it without any explanation, while beating the guests to the blood. One girl ran away beaten with a bloody head to her father, who had two sick Seromants; the father, having learned that our people had beaten his daughter, drove the patients out of the house, saying: "I do not want to have anything to do with you or with them."
CDAVO of Ukraine. F. 3836. Op. 1. Ref. 1. Ark. 34-38. Copy. Per. from Ukrainian language.

Political report of the head of the political department of the Ternopil regional military enlistment office Varavka to the head of the Political Directorate of the LVO Smolyanov on the activities of Ukrainian nationalists in the region in May 1945 "(May 25, 1945)
In the Pochayevsky district ... from the village of Yuridika, the bandits took and took to the forest an invalid of the Great Patriotic War who had arrived from the Red Army, twice awarded government awards, Kozachek Alexei Feofanovich and his brother, born in 1928, Kozachek Pyotr Feofanovich. April 28 this year the corpses of the above were found in the forest, over which the bandits brutally mocked: they gouged out their eyes, cut off their ears, nose, and smashed their heads with stones.
In the same area in the village of Stary Pochaev, on the night of April 1-2, a group of bandits attacked the apartment of the priest Dmitry Ivanovich Velichkovsky, completely robbed the apartment, and the priest and his wife, Maria Dmitrievna Velichkovsky, who worked as a teacher of an incomplete primary secondary school, daughter and mother, were taken out from the apartment, brutally tortured and thrown into a pit.
CA MO RF. F.134. Op. 13289. D. 490. L. 138-141 (reverse version). Script.