Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

In the period of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, the forces that had come into being under the Rada (and which by and large had joined the uprising against the Hetman) remained at the heart of the army, although numerous new units were formed: the Volhynia Division (composed of the Hetman’s Nalyvaiko Regiment, the Galician Regiment, the Czech-Ukrainian Regiment, and others) and the Podilia Division, which was composed of various revolutionary groups that were active in Podilia—the Karmeliuk, Zalizniak, the Blackhoods (Chornoslychnyki), and other regiments. In December 1918, the Ministry of War of the UNR reorganized the army into four groups: Left-Bank (commanded by Otaman Petro Bolbochan, in charge of the front against the Red Army); North Right-Bank (under Otaman Volodymyr Oskilko, in charge of the Bolshevik–Polish front); Southern (under General Oleksandr Hrekiv, in charge of the front against the Entente, French, and Greek forces that had recently disembarked at Odessa); and Dnestr (on the Romanian front). In February 1919, as the directory moved to find common cause with the Allies, the Southern and Dnestr groups were disbanded and their units transferred to the remaining two fronts facing Soviet Russia and Poland. After a renewed advance by Soviet forces (which captured Kiev on 4–6 February 1919) obliged the Ukrainian Army to retreat southwest into right-bank Ukraine in the spring of 1919, the forces of the UNR were again reorganized, into 11 divisions (each consisting of three infantry, one artillery, and one cavalry regiment), distributed among five formations. Then, in mid-July 1919, Polish forces pushed the Ukrainian Galician Army back across the Zbruch River. The Galician army continued to exist as a separate unit under its own command, but from this point onward coordinated its actions with the Ukrainian Army, under a common operational command (the Staff of the Supreme Otaman). At this point, the armed forces of the Ukrainian state consisted of three Galician corps (50,000 men) and the five formations of the UNR Army (30,000 men). When various partisan forces are added to this, the total fighting strength of the various armies at the command of the UNR was probably in the region of 100,000 personnel (including 35,000 combat troops), 335 cannons, 1,100 machine guns, 2 air regiments, and various armored trains and motor vehicles.

From December 1918 to the fall of the directory in late 1920, the Ukrainian Army was engaged in constant action. A critical point was reached in the autumn of 1919, when the main body of the army found itself near Chortoryia, in Volhynia, surrounded by Polish, Soviet, and White forces. The army broke up and resorted to partisan warfare against its enemies in the first of its Winter Campaigns, before regular forces were put back together to assist the Poles in the invasion of Ukraine (part of the Soviet–Polish War) following the Treaty of Warsaw (21–24 April 1920). By the time the Polish and Soviet sides negotiated an armistice at Riga in September–October 1920, the Ukrainian Army had again been reduced to little more than 20,000 men. It prepared an offensive against Soviet Russia, but the Red Army began its own offensive, and after intense battles (11–12 November 1920), the Ukrainian Army retreated westward. It crossed the River Zbruch on 21 November 1920 and was interned by the Polish authorities. Nevertheless, military activity continued, with partisan attacks against Soviet bases in right-bank Ukraine (the “Second Winter Campaign”). The Bolsheviks, however, soon routed the units involved in these incursions and executed 359 of their fighters on 23 November 1921.

After a long period of internment in the Polish camps (at Wadowice, Piotrków Trybunalski, Tuchola, Aleksandrów Kujawski, Łańcut, Strzałków, Kalisz, and Szczepiórno), the men of the Ukrainian Army were granted the status of refugees and were demobilized. The army staff continued to exist, as an institution subordinate to the government-in-exile of the UNR, although many commissioned individuals joined the Polish Army as “contract officers,” in the hope of a renewed attack on Soviet Russia by Poland. Various veteran associations flourished in émigré centers across Europe, the most active of which was the Society of Former Combatants of the Ukrainian Republican Democratic Army in France (established in 1927).