During World War II, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) waged an armed struggle for an independent Ukrainian state on lands inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians. Its opponents included the Nazi German occupation authorities, Soviet partisans — and, after Ukraine’s de-occupation, the Soviet government — as well as the Polish armed underground.
Beyond sabotage and combat operations, UPA fighters carried out ethnic cleansing against civilian populations. The most notorious such episode is the Volhynia massacre: over several months in 1943, more than 50,000 civilians were killed in Volhynia — a historical region at the junction of present-day Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus — the overwhelming majority of them ethnic Poles. According to Polish historians, UPA ethnic cleansing claimed up to 100,000 Polish lives between 1943 and 1945.
Modern Poland officially recognizes the Volhynia massacre as a genocide of the Polish population. In modern Ukraine, amid the war with Russia, the UPA is regarded primarily as a symbol of the struggle for independence.
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