Ukraine History
1. UKRAINE HISTORY
“The surprise German invasion of the U.S.S.R. began on June 22, 1941. The Soviets, during their hasty retreat, shot their political prisoners and, whenever possible, evacuated personnel, dismantled and removed industrial plants, and conducted a scorched-earth policy—blowing up buildings and installations, destroying crops and food reserves, and flooding mines. Almost four million people were evacuated east of the Urals for the duration of the war. The Germans moved swiftly, however, and by the end of November VIRTUALLY ALL OF UKRAINE WAS UNDER NAZI CONTROL.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Nazi-occupation-of-Soviet-Ukraine
Initially, the Germans were greeted as liberators by SOME of the Ukrainian populace. In Galicia especially, there had long been a widespread belief that Germany, as the avowed enemy of Poland and the U.S.S.R., was the Ukrainians’ natural ally for the attainment of their independence.
The illusion was quickly shattered.
In the occupied territories, the Nazis sought to implement their “racial” policies. In the fall of 1941 began the mass killings of Jews that continued through 1944. An estimated 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews perished, and over 800,000 were displaced to the east; at Baby Yar (Ukrainian: Babyn Yar) in Kyiv, nearly 34,000 were killed in just the first two days of massacre in the city. [See also Holocaust: The Einsatzgruppen.]
In the Reichskommissariat, ruthlessly administered by Erich Koch, Ukrainians were slated for servitude. The collective farms, whose dissolution was the fervent hope of the peasantry, were left intact, industry was allowed to deteriorate, and the cities were deprived of foodstuffs as all available resources were directed to support the German war effort. Some 2.2 million people were taken from Ukraine to Germany as slave labourers (Ostarbeiter, or “eastern workers”). Cultural activities were repressed, and education was limited to the elementary level.
Under such conditions of brutality, Ukrainian political activity, predicated originally on cooperation with the Germans, increasingly turned to underground organizational work and resistance. The OUN groups that streamed eastward in 1941 were soon subjected by the German authorities to repressive measures, including execution, so they propagated their nationalist views clandestinely and, through their contact with the local population, began to revise their ideology in a more democratic, pluralist direction.”
MORE HISTORY
Ukraine rates the 4th in the number of people recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” for saving Jews during the Holocaust.
The history of the Jews in Ukraine goes back over a thousand years. Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus’ (late 9th to mid-13th century). Some of the most important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, rose either fully or to an extensive degree in the territory of modern Ukraine. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes the third-largest in Europe and the fifth-largest in the world.
In the Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917-1920), Yiddish was declared a state language, along with Ukrainian and Russian. At that time, the Jewish National Union was created and the community was granted an autonomous status. Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency in this same period, between 1917 and 1920.[12] Before World War II, slightly less than one-third of Ukraine’s urban population consisted of Jews; they were the largest national minority in Ukraine.
Total civilian losses during World War II and the German occupation of Ukraine are estimated at seven million. More than one million Jews were shot and killed by the Einsatzgruppen [paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass-murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe.]
As ordered by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the Wehrmacht cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen, providing logistical support for their operations, and participated in the mass murders. Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen, related agencies, and foreign auxiliary personnel murdered more than two million people, including 1.3 million of the 5.5 to 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
After the close of World War II, 24 senior leaders of the Einsatzgruppen were prosecuted in the Einsatzgruppen trial in 1947–48, charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes.
2. Russian Roulette in Ukraine -2014
VICE News
113 video dispatches
6,420,708 views [Last updated on Jan 8, 2019]
VICE New brings you on-the-ground coverage of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKsLlK52ss&list=PLw613M86o5o5zqF6WJR8zuC7Uwyv76h7R&index=1
3. Russia’s Brutal Strategy: An analysis of more than 1,000 photos found that Russia has used hundreds of weapons in Ukraine that are widely banned by international treaties.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/19/world/europe/ukraine-munitions-war-crimes.html?action=click&pgtype=LegacyCollection&state=default&module=styln-russia-ukraine&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc
4. EXCELLENT ARTICLE
Finnish Intelligence Officer Explains the Russian Mindset
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
April 4, 2022
3016
https://ricochet.com/1214468/finnish-intelligence-officer-explains-the-russian-mindset/
https://the-culture-shocks.blogspot.com/2022/03/evaluation-of-russia-by-finish.html
On December 8, 1991, Ukrainian President Kravchuk (second from left), Belarusian Supreme Soviet Chairman Stanislav Shushkevich (third from left), and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (second from right) signed a declaration that "the Soviet Union as a geopolitical reality [and] a subject of international law has CEASED TO EXIST."