During the Second World War, Ukraine lost more people than the combined losses of Great Britain, Canada, Poland, the USA and France. The total Ukrainian losses during the war is an estimated 8-10 million lives. The number of Ukrainian victims can be compared to the modern population of Austria.
During the Second World War, the front passed the whole of the Ukrainian territory twice. Through Kharkiv, the second largest city in the country, the front passed by four times. Ukrainians became cannon fodder for two dictators – Hitler and Stalin. Every third man in the Red Army was lost (compared to every 20th in the British army). The reason for this terrible situation was simple – Stalin did not count the losses because, as he said: “Women can give birth to more children!”
Much like Pares’ “10 million” comments are as wrong as they are over-simplistic, calling the Red Army during WWII simply “Russian” as many westerners did at the time and continue to do so today is also as wrong as it is over simplistic. The Red Army was very much a multinational force.
In the Soviet red army alone were 4.5 million citizens of Ukraine. According to Soviet statistics, 409,668 Ukrainians were awarded medals for bravery in the war; 961 became heroes of the Soviet Union; and 60 per cent of the 250,000-strong Soviet partisan force in Ukraine was Ukrainian.
Thousands of Ukrainians served in the Polish army of General Wladyslaw Anders and fought with him on the British side in Egypt, Libya, and Italy. Ukrainians also joined the Polish units that advanced with the Soviet army into Poland. Czech units attached to the Allied forces and formed in the USSR had Ukrainian troops. In 1943, of the 15,000 soldiers in the brigade led by General Ludvik Svoboda, 11,000 were Ukrainians. Most of them became members of the brigade after a three-year sojourn in Soviet concentration camps, where they had been kept since 1940. (Thirty thousand Ukrainians had originally fled to the Soviet Union from Subcarpathian Ukraine to escape the Nazi-supported Hungarian occupation of their territory. The Soviet authorities, suspicious of their national consciousness and eager to assure the Germans that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact would be honoured, promptly arrested them and sent them to concentration camps.)
Ukrainians served in the Romanian and Hungarian armies, and they played an important role in bringing about peace between the latter and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Ukrainians fought on the side of the Serbian monarchist Draza Mihailovic and with Tito's Yugoslav partisans. A large number of Ukrainians served in the American and Canadian armed forces (an estimated 40,000 in the latter). They could also be found in the French Resistance.
Ukraine is currently in a transitional phase that has had hitches. For instance, bans on Soviet symbols such as the hammer and sickle have been the source of conflict, including some during May 9 marches.
The Saint George's Ribbon is another symbol that was banned in Ukraine in 2017.
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