1.

Soviet-German treaty of 1939

"Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact". On the eve
of World War II, the USSR found itself at
the center of international relations.
Both Britain and France and Germany
sought the support of the USSR. J.
Stalin leaned towards an alliance with
Germany. After short negotiations
between the Minister of Foreign Affairs
of Germany J. Ribbentrop and the
People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs
of the USSR V. Molotov, on August 23,
1939, a non-aggression pact was signed
between the two countries.
A separate part of the Soviet-German
treaty was a secret protocol that went
down in history as the Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact. It provided for the
delimitation of the spheres of influence
of the two states in Europe. Germany
recognized Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and
Bessarabia as the USSR's sphere of
interests, and included Lithuania in its
sphere of interests. The pact also
planned the division of Poland along the
Narew, Vistula, and Xiang rivers. Thus,
the secret protocol concerned the
Ukrainian lands that were part of Poland
and Romania.
 Giving the Ukrainian lands to J. Stalin,
A. Hitler seemed to emphasize for the
second time his disinterest in Ukraine
(for the first time this was emphasized
by Germany's actions towards
Carpathian Ukraine, which was handed
over to Hungary). The agreements
between the USSR and Germany untied
the latter's hands for aggression against
Poland and thus started World War II.

The beginning of the Second World War.

On September 1, 1939, Germany
launched an armed aggression against
Poland. During the first week of the war,
the organized resistance of the Polish
army was broken. As early as
September 3, 1939, the Commander-in-
Chief of the Polish Armed Forces,
Marshal E. Rydz-Smigli, realized that
defeat was imminent. However, some
Polish units continued to resist, and
sometimes even won single victories.
Although Poland's allies, Britain and
France, declared war on Germany on
September 3, no real action was taken
to help it.
 After the start of hostilities, the majority
of the Ukrainian population remained
loyal to Poland. Those Ukrainians who
served in the Polish army did their duty
honestly, showing great heroism. It is
estimated that every tenth of them died
in battle or died from wounds and
diseases in prisoner-of-war camps.
When Germany started the war, it tried
to involve the USSR in its aggressive
actions in order to make it a participant
and an ally. However, the Soviet
leadership replied that it would
"necessarily have to" take concrete
action at the right time. However, we
believe that this moment has not yet
come ", and" haste can ruin the case
and contribute to the unity of enemies. "
This position of the Soviet leadership
prompted the German command to
resolve the Polish question without the
Soviet Union. German troops crossed
the line indicated in the secret protocol
and moved further east, approaching
Lviv and Brest, and began to consider in
more detail the establishment of a
Ukrainian state in Galicia, relying on the
OUN, which was to organize an anti-
Polish uprising. Also, the
German reconnaissance (Abwehr) in the
German army created a Ukrainian
legion, mostly of former soldiers of the
Carpathian Sich (200-600 people) under
the command of R. Sushka.

Entry of the Red Army into the territory

of Western Ukraine. While the German
army defeated the main forces of the
Polish army, the USSR was preparing its
forces to join the aggression. The
Belarusian (Commander M. Kovalev)
and Ukrainian (Commander S.
Tymoshenko, Chief of Staff M. Vatutin)
were created to attack Poland.
On September 17, 1939, the Red Army
entered the territory of Western Ukraine
and Western Belarus. The offensive
coincided with the departure of the
Polish government to Romania. The
Red Army was advancing rapidly. The
main goal of the Ukrainian Front was to
seize Lviv as soon as possible. The
same goal was pursued by German
troops, who approached the city on
September 13 and surrounded it on
three sides
on September 18. Polish troops put up
fierce resistance. On September 19,
1939, a battle broke out between
German and Soviet units over a
misunderstanding. Eventually, after
negotiations, German troops were
withdrawn from the city, and on
September 22, 1939, Lviv was occupied
by Soviet troops. The Polish garrison
did not resist the Soviet troops. On the
same day, joint parades of Soviet and
German troops in honor of the victory
over Poland took place in Brest, Grodno,
Pinsk, and Przemyśl.
In planning the attack on Poland, the
Soviet leadership sought to find a
propaganda basis for this action. It
attributed its actions to the oppressed
situation of Ukrainians and Belarusians
in Poland and their defenseless position
after the collapse of the Polish state.
On the eve of the entry of Soviet troops
into Poland, the Polish ambassador in
Moscow was handed a note.
Having such an ideological justification,
the aggression against Poland was
presented as a "liberation campaign" of
the Red Army.
During the "campaign", the Red Army
occupied
a smaller area than provided for in the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Negotiations
between Germany and the USSR began
in Moscow to settle border issues,
culminating in the signing on September
28, 1939, of the Treaty of Friendship and
Border and two secret protocols thereto.
Under this agreement, the spheres of
influence between the two states in
Eastern Europe were finally divided and
a joint Soviet-German border was
established.

According to the treaty, the Polish state

was liquidated, a new border was
established along the Curzon line, and
Lithuania became a sphere of influence
of the Soviet Union in exchange for
ethnically Polish lands ceded to
Germany. Also under the agreement,
the Polonized Ukrainian ethnic lands -
Kholmshchyna, Pidlyashshya, Posyan-
nya, Lemkivshchyna, where almost
500,000 people of Ukrainian origin lived,
came under German influence. This
circumstance shows that in his actions
J. Stalin was guided not by the desire to
save the "blood brothers" (Ukrainians
and Belarusians), but by strategic
interests aimed at capturing more
favorable borders for a new strike on the
West.

As a result of the division of Poland,

51.4% of its territory with 37.1% of the
population (12 million people) left for the
USSR.

2. On June 22, 1941, at 3:30 a.m.,

Wehrmacht troops launched a powerful
artillery and mortar strike at the locations
of Red Army units. In a few minutes, the
German army crossed the Soviet border.
Its aircraft struck cities and important
industrial centers, airfields, where 1.2
thousand Soviet aircraft were destroyed.
The German coup, despite the Soviet
Union's careful preparations for war,
came as a complete surprise to both the
people and the Stalinist leadership.
According to a detailed Barbarossa
plan, Germany and its allies
concentrated 190 divisions totaling 5.5
million men to attack the USSR. They
were opposed by a group of Soviet
troops, which numbered 170 divisions
and two brigades (2.9 million people).
The Nazi plan
was designed for lightning war
("blitzkrieg").
The German Army Group South
(Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal G.
Rundstedt) was sent to Ukraine, which
also included Romanian and Hungarian
troops, and was later joined by Slovak,
Italian, and other German allies.
According to the Bar-Barossa plan, the
offensive on Ukraine was ancillary. The
main Nazi forces were to attack Moscow
via Belarus.
In general, German troops were inferior
to Soviet troops in Ukraine, both in
numbers and in armaments. However,
in the direction of the main strike, the
army group "South" had the advantage.
She had to take Kyiv in the first week of
the war. However, events unfolded
differently. Along the border, Nazi units
met with desperate resistance from
border guards and small garrisons of
unfinished and not yet fully equipped
border fortified areas of the Molotov
Line.
On June 23, 1941, the main units of
German troops were counterattacked by
Soviet mechanized corps near the cities
of Lutsk-Rivne-Dubno-Brody. The first
grandiose tank
battle in World War II broke out, which
lasted until June 29. Germany's
advance was delayed for a week, but it
came at a high price: only 737 of the
4,000 tanks on the Southwest Front
remained. The German army lost only a
few dozen tanks.
However, the blow of the Soviet
mechanized corps thwarted Ni-
mechchyna's attempt to seize Kyiv
immediately and made it possible to
prepare defensive lines on the outskirts
of the city. On July 5, 1941, Nazi troops
entered the fortifications of Kyiv. This
day is considered the beginning of the
Kyiv Strategic Defense Operation, which
lasted 83 days.
The German command assessed the
breakthrough as a decisive victory, and
the fall of Kyiv was considered a matter
of the near future. On July 21, 1941, A.
Hitler scheduled a parade on
Khreshchatyk. However, these plans
did not materialize. The heroic
defenders of the city (more than 120,000
soldiers, 33,000 of whom were members
of the People's Militia) held steady.
The attack on Kyiv has temporarily
stopped.
Thus, the defense of Kiev forced the
German command to retreat from the
Barbarossa plan and temporarily divert
significant forces to defeat Soviet troops
in Ukraine, stopping the offensive on
Moscow.
Over time, the situation around Kyiv
began to deteriorate. At the beginning
of July 1941, the troops of Germany,
Hungary, and Romania launched a
decisive offensive against the Southern
Front of Soviet troops, which continued
to hold the Soviet-Romanian border.
September 8, 1941
near Uman the troops of the Southern
Front were surrounded and defeated.
103,000 Red Army soldiers were taken
prisoner alone. This allowed the
German-Hungarian-Romanian army to
reach the Dnieper south of Kyiv, and
also to enter the deep rear of the troops
of the Southern Front. As early as
August 10, the united Southern Front did
not exist. Part of the troops (30,000
people) of the Southern Front was
trapped in Odessa, and the rest -
between the Southern Bug and the
Dnieper.
J. Stalin forbade the troops of the
Southern
Front to retreat beyond the Dnieper.
Only on August 14, when the troops
were already surrounded, was it allowed
to break through to the left bank of the
Dnieper. Only 12,000 soldiers left the
encirclement. Only Odessa held its
defense for 73 days until October 16,
1941.
After defeating the troops of the
Southern Front on the Right Bank,
German troops posed a threat to the
Southwestern Front from the south. The
same situation arose in the North, where
German troops captured Smolensk.
To avoid a catastrophe, the
representative of the Stavka G. Zhukov
proposed to withdraw troops across the
Dnieper and leave Kyiv. However, Stalin
flatly rejected this proposal. Only on
September 17 did Stavka order to leave
Kyiv, but it was too late. The troops of
the South-Western Front were
surrounded and defeated. Almost all the
leadership of the front, led by M.
Kirponos, was killed. 665 thousand
were taken prisoner.
Soviet soldiers. On September 19,
German troops entered Kyiv.
The defeat of the Southern and
Southwestern
fronts of Soviet troops allowed Nazi
troops to continue their offensive on the
Left Bank and break into the Crimea.
Further defense of Odessa lost its
meaning, on October 16, 1941 the
defenders left the city.
On the eve of the retreat, the coastal
areas of the city, some of the wounded
and everything that could not be taken
out (horses, cars, etc.) were sunk in the
sea. The evacuated units were
transferred to Sevastopol, which was
surrounded. The heroic defense of the
city lasted 250 days (from October 30,
1941 to July 4, 1942). The defense of
Sevastopol thwarted Germany's plans
for a rapid offensive in the Caucasus
and Transcaucasia.
During the five months of the war,
German troops and their allies managed
to advance 900-1200 km into Ukraine.
Only the territories in the east of the
Ukrainian SSR remained unoccupied.
Despite the defeat of Soviet troops in
Ukraine and its occupation, plans for a
lightning war were thwarted.
3.
Ukrainian lands were supposed to be
turned into
"living space" for the "Aryan race".
Ukrainian lands, as the most fertile,
were to become a source of supplies
and raw materials for the "new Europe".
Part of the population of the occupied
territories was planned to be enslaved,
the rest was to be destroyed. After the
end of the war, the occupied territories
were to be colonized or mutilated.
"New Order" is the name of the
occupation regime established by the
Nazi authorities in the occupied
territories. He was especially cruel and
massacred civilians.
The "new order" introduced by the
Nazis provided for: 1) a system of mass
extermination; 2) robbery system; 3)
the system of exploitation of human and
material resources.
A feature of the German "new order"
was total terror.
To this end, a system of punitive bodies
was created - the State and Secret
Police (Gestapo), armed formations of
the Security Service (SD) and armed
units of the National Socialist Workers'
Party of Germany (NSDAP).
 The auxiliary police and the lower
echelons of the occupation
administration were formed from the
local population: mayors in the cities and
elders in the villages.
In total, the occupation formations
amounted to about 350 thousand
people.
The intentions of the German authorities
in the occupied eastern territories were
set out in the Ost Plan, a plan for the
destruction of the population and the
"development" of the occupied territories
in the east. It was developed under the
leadership of A. Hitler, G. Himmler, A.
Rosenberg and other Nazi figures.
A special Office (Ministry) of the
Occupied Territories was established by
the Third Reich to manage the occupied
territories. The ministry was headed by
A. Rosenberg. It consisted of four
departments:
political, administrative, economic, civil.
 Having captured Ukraine, the occupying
forces first of all destroyed its integrity.
They divided the Ukrainian lands into
four parts, subordinating them to
different states and different
administrative bodies.
 Thus, three governorships were created
- "Bessarabia" (six districts of the
Moldavian SSR and the Izmail region of
the USSR with its center in the city of
Chisinau), "Bukovyna" (Chernivtsi region
and some northern regions of the MSSR
with its center in Chernivtsi) and
"Transnistria". Odessa, southern
districts of Vinnytsia, western districts of
Mykolayiv regions, left-bank districts of
Moldova with the center in the city of
Tiraspol, and later Odessa). They came
under the control of Germany's ally
Romania.

Western Ukrainian lands - Lviv,

Drohobych, Stanislav and Ternopil
regions - as a separate district (district)
called "Galicia" were included in the
Polish Governor-General, which
included Polish lands centered in
Krakow. These lands became a direct
part of the Third Reich.
 Chernihiv region, Sumy region, Kharkiv
region and Donbass as frontline regions
were directly subordinated to the military
command.
Other Ukrainian lands were part of the
Reich Commissariat "Ukraine" with its
center in Rivne. The Reich
Commissariat was divided into six
general districts with centers in
Dnipropetrovsk, Melitopol, Mykolayiv,
Kyiv, Zhytomyr, and Rivne. The territory
of the Reich Commissariat was
separated from the military zone by a
border, which the local population was
forbidden to cross under threat of death.
In September 1941, A. Hitler appointed
Erich Koch, a "tested soldier" of the
NSDAP, to the post of Reich Commissar
of Ukraine.
Measures to establish a "new order"
have become another tragedy of the
Ukrainian people. Millions of civilians
were killed in the occupied territories,
there were almost 300 places of mass
extermination, 180 concentration camps,
more than 350 ghettos and more.
To prevent the Resistance from
spreading, the German authorities
introduced a system of hostages and
collective responsibility for acts of terror
or sabotage. The places of the most
massive killings of civilians were Babyn
Yar in Kyiv (from 100 to 150 thousand),
Drobitsky Yar in Kharkiv (30 thousand),
Domanivka and Bogdanovka in Odesa
region (over 50
thousand), etc. A total of 3.9 million
civilians were killed in Ukraine during the
occupation.
In violation of international conventions
(but it should be noted that the USSR
did not recognize or sign these
documents), the Nazi authorities
resorted to the mass extermination of
prisoners of war in Ukraine. In total,
almost 2 million prisoners of war were
killed in Ukraine.

Cruelty, contempt for Ukrainians and

people of other nationalities as people of
the lower class were the main features
of the German system of government.
Military ranks, even lower ones, were
given the right to shoot without trial or
investigation. During the occupation in
the cities and villages there was a
curfew. Shops, restaurants,
hairdressers served only the occupiers.
The population of the city was forbidden
to use railway and public transport,
electricity, telegraph, post office,
pharmacy. Advertisements could be
seen everywhere: "Only for Germans",
"Ukrainians are not allowed in" and so
on.
The occupying power immediately
began to
pursue a policy of economic exploitation
and ruthless oppression of the
population. Workers were forced to
work 12 to 14 hours a day for meager
wages or only minimal food rations.
About 2.2 million girls and boys were
deported to Germany for forced labor.

4. In the autumn of 1941, underground

regional committees, district
committees, primary organizations and
groups of the CPSU (B) were formed in
Ukraine.
Guerrilla units appeared in the woods.
However, of the 3,500 guerrilla units
and sabotage groups left in the occupied
territories, only 22 were active in the
summer of 1942, and others disbanded
or were defeated. Nazi punitive forces
with experience in fighting resistance
movements in Europe acted against the
underground and guerrillas. Punishers
killed about 30 thousand people in the
first year. However, the Soviet guerrilla
and underground movement against the
Nazi occupation did not
abate.
The reasons for the deployment of the
Soviet resistance movement:
1) occupation of the homeland by
invaders;
2) the brutality of the occupation
regime;
3) purposeful activities of the Soviet
leadership to organize the Resistance
movement in the occupied territories.
Passive forms of struggle were also
widespread: various assistance to
guerrillas; refusal to cooperate with the
occupying power; sabotage of
measures of the occupying power:
release of spoiled products; disruption
of food supplies for the occupying army;
evasion of work and sending to
Germany, etc.

Manifestations of active forms of

struggle would be: guerrilla movement
and sabotage and propaganda activities
of the underground.
In Ukraine, the most favorable for
guerrilla activity were the northern
areas. It was there that the largest
guerrilla units were formed. However,
Soviet guerrilla groups operated mainly
in Chernihiv, Sumy, and partly in
Kharkiv,
Kyiv, and Zhytomyr oblasts.
The Soviet leadership encouraged the
guerrilla movement, but at the same
time distrusted this form of struggle,
fearing that in the future these people
might oppose the Soviet government.
Therefore, attempts were made to
establish control over the actions of
guerrillas.
A special commissioner was attached to
each detachment commander.
In May 1942, the Ukrainian
Headquarters of the Partisan Movement
(USHPR) was established, headed by T.
Strokach. The headquarters was to
coordinate the actions of partisan
detachments and the Red Army, provide
the guerrillas with weapons, explosives,
food, and so on. He was subordinated
to the Central Headquarters of the
partisan movement headed by P.
Ponomarenko.
At the end of 1942, a new stage in the
development of the Soviet guerrilla
movement began. It became more
numerous and organized.
 The guerrillas began to coordinate their
actions with those of the Red Army. An
underground Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(Bolsheviks) was created, which
adopted the first plan of partisan combat
operations for the winter of 1942-1943.
Raids in the enemy's rear became a
new form of struggle. On October 26,
1942, Sidor Kovpak and Oleksandr
Saburov moved from the Sumy region to
the west. After crossing the Dnieper,
moving through the northern districts of
Kyiv and Zhytomyr, the guerrillas
destroyed German communications and
garrisons. This raid forced the Nazi
command to increase its forces in the
rear. A bright page in the guerrilla
struggle in Ukraine in the first months of
1943 was the "Steppe" raid of a guerrilla
unit under the command of Mikhail
Naumov. The guerrillas fought more
than 2,300 km to the Odessa region and
retreated to Belarus under pressure
from German troops.

The priority form of partisan activity in

1943 was the struggle on Wehrmacht
communications. Thus, in the summer
of 1943, the guerrillas carried out large-
scale operations "Rail War" and
"Concert", paralyzing the transport
system of the Germans. In addition, the
guerrillas helped the Soviet army during
the forcing of the Dnieper and the
liberation of Right-Bank Ukraine.

Polish liberation movement in western

Ukraine. The occupation and
dismemberment of Poland did not break
the will of the Polish population to revive
their own state. As early as 1939, an
underground movement began to form,
led by the Polish émigré government
from London. An underground network
also existed in Eastern Galicia and
Volhynia.
In 1939-1941, she tried to fight against
the Soviet punitive authorities and strike
at communications through which oil
and other raw materials were delivered
to Germany from the USSR. Attacks on
weapons depots were desperate.
However, such activities quickly put the
underground network under attack by
the
penal authorities, and it was effectively
defeated.
After the German attack on the USSR,
the strategy of the Polish underground
changed. In Eastern Galicia and
Volhynia, the restoration of the
underground network and the formation
of combat units began.
From November 1941, in Galicia and
Volhynia, as in the Polish lands
themselves, the Polish command
actively created the Krajina Army (AK).
wartime to revive the Polish state within
1939. Initially, the strategic task of the
army was to gather strength and at an
opportune moment to raise a nationwide
uprising (plan "Storm"). The AK units in
Galicia and Volhynia were tasked with
preventing the redeployment of the
occupying forces to the central regions
of Poland, where the center of the
uprising was to be located. However,
not all Poles shared the views of the
émigré government "to keep a gun at
your feet." Some advocated immediate
action against the occupying power,
others adhered to pro-Soviet ones
5.
The beginning of the liberation of
Ukraine. Fighting on the left bank. After
the defeat of Nazi troops in the Battle of
Stalingrad, their expulsion from Ukraine
began. The first settlement liberated on
December 18, 1942, was the village of
Pivnivka, Voroshilovgrad (now Luhansk)
region. Most of the Kharkiv region was
liberated, along with Kharkiv and part of
the Donbass. The advanced units of
Soviet troops even approached
Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye,
advancing 700 km deep into the
occupied territory of Ukraine.
However, the rapid advance of Soviet
troops was soon halted. In February
1943, German troops launched
significant counterattacks, as a result of
which Soviet troops had to leave the
territory of Ukraine again. On March 15,
1943, German troops captured Kharkiv
for the second time, and on March 18,
Belgorod. Only the north of
Voroshilovgrad and the eastern part of
Kharkiv remained under Soviet control.
As a result of German counterattacks,
the so-called Kursk ledge was formed,
where from April to
July 1943 there was a relative calm.
Both sides were preparing for decisive
battles in the summer of 1943. The
Battle of Kursk began on July 5, 1943.
German tank formations dealt powerful
blows from the south and north of the
Kursk Rifle. However, the Soviet
defenses withstood, and the offensive
was halted.
The implementation of the offensive
plans of the Soviet command began.
The troops of the Western, Bryansk, and
Central Fronts, which carried out
Operation Kutuzov, were the first to
attack. From July 12 to August 17,
1943, the troops of the fronts liquidated
the Orel ledge and liberated the city of
Orel.
At that moment, an order was issued to
conduct the Donbas operation.
It was planned to break through the
Mius Front and liberate the territory of
Donbass. However, the offensive of
Soviet troops on July 17-30, 1943,
failed.
On August 3-23, 1943, Soviet troops
launched an offensive in the Belgorod-
Kharkov direction (Operation
Rumyantsev Commander). Soviet
troops drove the German army out of
the Kursk
ledge and captured the cities of
Belgorod and Kharkiv.
On August 13, 1943, Soviet troops
launched the second Donbas operation.
This time they managed to overcome
the Nazi defenses and force the enemy
to leave Donbass. At the same time, the
offensive began on the Left Bank. The
German command decided to go to the
defense. On August 11, an order was
issued to build a system of fortifications
on the Dnieper and Molochna rivers,
which was named "Eastern Wall". The
retreating troops had to hold back the
Soviet offensive in the Donbas and the
Left Bank for as long as possible.

Battle for the Dnieper. Liberation of

Kyiv. Retreating, German troops sought
to turn the Left Bank into a desert.
Reich Commissar of Ukraine E. Koch
demanded the destruction of everything
that could not be taken to the rear. Only
a rapid offensive by Soviet troops saved
Left-Bank Ukraine from complete
destruction. With the growing offensive,
it was decided to
withdraw the army across the Dnieper.
Now all hope was placed on the
"Eastern Wall".
The German command tried to use a
high-water river with a high right bank as
a natural fortification. On the Dnieper
cliffs, German troops gathered a group
of armies "Center" consisting of 62
divisions.
In the Soviet plans for the autumn of
1943, the priority was to capture the
bridgeheads on the right bank of the
Dnieper, consolidate there and deploy
offensive operations on the Right Bank.
This task was accomplished, but at the
cost of significant losses. The storming
of the Dnieper was accompanied by
extremely large, often unjustified
casualties. Tens of thousands of recruits
died, the so-called "gray jackets" (or
"blacksmiths") - unarmed, untrained
young men, hastily mobilized in the
Dnieper regions of Ukraine. In 1943,
about 1 million people were mobilized to
join the Soviet Army on the Left Bank.
Initially, the decisive offensive was
supposed to start from the Bukryn
bridgehead (south of Kyiv), but all
attempts to break into the
operational space were unsuccessful.
On the eve of a decisive attack on Kyiv,
the Soviet command used military
cunning. The German command was
convinced that a major offensive was
planned from the Bukrin bridgehead.
Large groups of tanks were transported
there in front of the German army.
However, at night these tanks marched
on the Lutyz bridgehead (north of Kyiv),
and in the morning a large-scale
offensive began.
In the first days of November, decisive
battles for Kyiv broke out. On
November 6, 1943, the city was
liberated.
Then the Soviet troops advanced to the
west and captured Zhyto-mir, but could
not hold the city. The German command
launched powerful counterattacks, trying
to retake Kyiv. However, Soviet troops
repulsed the counteroffensive and
prepared the way for a further offensive
on the Right Bank.

The beginning of the great battle was

the Zhytomyr-Berdychiv operation,
which was
carried out by the First Ukrainian Front
from December 24, 1943 to January 14,
1944. As a result, on December 31,
1943, Soviet troops recaptured
Zhytomyr and drove German troops
west. In early January 1944, Soviet
troops unexpectedly returned the strike
force to the south, captured the large
Zhmerynka station, and threatened to
encircle large German forces near Bila
Tserkva, Fastiv, and Cherkasy. In order
to prevent the encirclement, on January
11-12, 1944, German troops launched a
powerful counterattack, as a result of
which they managed to drive the Soviet
units out of Zhmerynka. The front
stabilized.
Meanwhile, from January 5 to 16, 1944,
the troops of the Second Ukrainian Front
carried out Operation Kirovohrad.
German forces were pushed back 40 km
west of Kirovograd. January 24 -
February 17, 1944 forces of the First
and Second Ukrainian Fronts carried out
the Korsun-Shevchenko offensive
operation. The Soviet fronts struck on
the flanks and on January 29, 1944,
united near Zvenigorodka, surrounded
an 80,000-strong German group,
which was completely destroyed. Due
to the great losses of Germany, the
Korsun-Shevchenko operation is often
called "Stalingrad on the Dnieper", or
"the second Stalingrad".
Almost simultaneously with the
beginning of the Korsun-Shevchenko
operation, the northern (right) wing of
the First Ukrainian Front went on the
offensive, launching the Lutsk-Rivne
offensive operation, which lasted from
January 27 to February 11, 1944. The
Soviet army managed to drive German
troops out of two oblasts. centers of
North-Western Ukraine.
During this operation, the Soviet Army
advanced 200-250 km, occupied
important communication hubs - Sarny,
Rivne, Zdolbuniv, Shepetivka,
threatened the encirclement of German
troops holding the territory of Vinnytsia
and Kamyanets-Podilsky regions of
Ukraine.
 In order to liberate the economically
important areas of Kryvyi Rih and
Nikopol, the command of the Soviet
Army developed the Nikopol-Kryvyi Rih
offensive operation, which lasted from
January 30 to February 29, 1944.
 and was carried out by the forces of the
Third and Fourth Ukrainian Fronts. The
German command had high hopes for
the spring off-road, which could stop the
continuous advance of Soviet troops
and allow the Wehrmacht to regroup its
own forces. However, the newly
appointed commander of the First
Ukrainian Front, Marshal G. Zhukov,
ordered the beginning of the Proskuriv-
Chernivtsi offensive operation (March 4 -
April 17, 1944).
The Soviet army managed to "cut" the
German army group "South" into two
parts (later reorganized into two army
groups "Southern Ukraine" and
"Northern Ukraine"). Soviet troops
captured such important cities as
Vinnytsia, Zhmerynka, Proskuriv,
Ternopil, Kamyanets-Podilsky,
Chernivtsi, and Khotyn.
At the same time, the troops of the First
Ukrainian Front conducted a local
Polissya offensive operation on their
northern flank (March 15 - April 5, 1944),
during which they blocked an important
railway junction on three sides - Kovel
station.
During the Uman-Botosani operation
(March 5, 1944), Soviet troops
successively crossed three major rivers,
the Southern Bug, the Dniester, and the
Prut, expelling the Wehrmacht from the
Ukrainian Podillya and Moldavia. On
March 26, 1944, units of the Second
Ukrainian Front first crossed the USSR-
Romania border and reached the town
of Botosani.
At the same time, the troops of the Third
Ukrainian Front conducted two more
operations: Bereznehuvato-Snihurivska
(March 6-18, 1944) and Odesa (March
26-April 14, 1944). Until April 17, 1944.
troops of the Third Ukrainian Front
reached the Dniester in its lower
reaches and moved to the defense.
On April 8, 1944, the troops of the
Fourth Ukrainian Front launched the
Crimean operation. As early as April 10,
1944, they crossed the Gulf of Sivas and
unexpectedly retreated to the rear of
German troops at Perekop. German
troops began retreating to the south of
Crimea. Romanian units surrendered
en masse. By April
15, 1944, German divisions had
retreated to Sevastopol, where they
were awaiting evacuation. However,
during the three weeks of fighting (until
May 7, 1944), the German fleet
managed to withdraw only part of the
German and Romanian divisions. On
May 5, the storming of the Sevastopol-
Polish fortifications began. Particularly
fierce fighting broke out on Sapun Gora.
After a 9-hour assault, it was already in
the hands of Soviet troops.
On May 9, 1944, Sevastopol was taken.
On May 12, 1944, the defeat of German
and Romanian troops in the Crimea was
completed.
By the end of the spring of 1944, only a
few territories of Volyn and Volyn
Polissya west of Lutsk and Kovel, most
of Galicia, part of Bukovina, and all of
Transcarpathia remained under
Ukrainian control under the control of
the Wehrmacht and its allies.