Ukrainian Insurgent Army

Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainian: Ukrainska Povstanska Armiya, UPA) was a guerrilla army formed on October 14, 1942, in Volhynia. The UPA was the military branch of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The main goal of the UPA was an independent Ukraine. Its leader was Roman Shukhevych.

The UPA fought a broad spectrum of military forces in the area: the Polish Armia Krajowa, the Soviet Red Army, and the German Wehrmacht alike, although the OUN was allied with the Germans until June 30, 1941. After World War II, UPA partisan units continued fighting the Soviet Union and communist Poland until the early 1950's, especially in Carpathian Mountains regions.

The UPA strove to remove Poles from areas that it regarded as indigenously Ukrainian. In the opinion of some historians, the goal pursued by the Ukrainian guerrillas was to destroy the Polish ethnic community in these areas. Some estimates have put the Polish death toll as high as 100,000 (see Massacre of Poles in Volhynia for more details).

On the other hand, the UPA's activities are sometimes seen as a response to actions of the inter-war Polish government, which sought to limit the number of Ukrainian institutions in the same areas, often regarded as indigenously Polish. The actions of extremist wings on both sides could be legally characterized as genocide.

See also:

• Massacre of Poles in Volhynia
• Operation Wisla

Eternal links

• UPA – Ukrainian Insurgent Army