Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

In January–February 1919, the forces of the Ukrainian Front undertook a major offensive that captured Khar′kov (3 January 1919), Kiev (4–6 February 1919), and all of left-bank Ukraine. In May 1919, following battles against the Ukrainian Army and the interventionists, they also suppressed the Hryhoriiv Uprising, which had been organized by a rebel commander of the Ukrainian Front in right-bank Ukraine. By an order of the Revvoensovet of the Republic of 4 June 1919, the Ukrainian Front was reformed on 15 June 1919. The 1st and 3rd Ukrainian Soviet Armies then formed the basis of the 12th Red Army on the Western Front, while the 3rd Ukrainian Soviet Army became the 14th Red Army on the Southern Front.

The commander of the Ukrainian Front throughout its existence was V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko (4 January–15 June 1919). Its chiefs of staff were V. P. Glagolev (4 January–2 May 1919); A. I. Davydov (temporary, 2–12 May 1919); and E. I. Babin (12 May–15 June 1919).

UKRAINIAN GALICIAN ARMY. This force, constituting the army of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (WUPR), was founded (following a WUPR law on military service of 13 November 1918) around the nucleus of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and other Ukrainian detachments of the former Austro-Hungarian Army. The army, built on battalion-sized units called (in tribute to the Zaporozhian Cossack formations of the 17th century) kureny, was originally divided into three corps (each consisting of from three to five kureny), augmented by two new corps formed in June 1919 (during the Chortkiv offensive), by which time it had reached a strength of some 75,000 men. However, the force was chronically short of small arms, ammunition, and medicines (relying on what could be taken from the few Austrian depots and demobilizing forces in the region) and had few trained officers, although it was comparatively well stocked with artillery and controlled some 40 aircraft.

Although there were some clashes with Romanian forces over Bukovina, until it was forced back across the Zbruch River on 16–17 July 1919, the Ukrainian Galician Army was chiefly engaged with the Ukrainian–Polish War. Thereafter (with the exception of its Mountain Brigade, which became isolated and retreated into Czechoslovakia, where it was deployed against the Soviet Hungarian forces of Béla Kun), the Ukrainian Galician Army joined the forces of the Ukrainian National Republic in its advances against Red forces around Odessa and Kiev, although the unsteady relationship between the Ukrainian commander Symon Petliura and the Western Ukrainian dictator Yevhen Petrushevych meant that the collaboration was never a smooth one.

By the autumn of 1919, the army, which had been ravaged by a typhus epidemic and was penned into a small corner of Podolia, near Vinnitsa, was threatened on all sides by Polish, Red Army, and White forces. Its fighting strength by this time had been reduced to about 5,000 men. In these desperate circumstances, General Myron Tarnavsky made an unauthorized truce with the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) on 6 November 1919, for which he was promptly dismissed, although his successor, General Osyp Mykytka, was forced to make a similar truce on 19 November 1919. When, over the winter of 1919–1920, the AFSR was driven out of the region by the Red Army, the remains of the Galician Army found it expedient to come to terms with the Bolsheviks, who assigned V. P. Zatonskii to reorganize the force as the Red Ukrainian Galician Army. However, when, in April 1920, under the terms of the Treaty of Warsaw (21–24 April 1920), a joint Polish–Ukrainian offensive against Soviet forces was launched by Jozef Pilsudski and Petliura, two of the three brigades of the Red Ukrainian Galician Army deserted to the invading Polish–Ukrainian forces, and the other was surrounded and surrendered. Deserters and captives alike were then interned near Warsaw. Most of the few members of the force who remained on the Soviet side were imprisoned and shot. During the Second World War, many veterans of the Ukrainian Galician Army joined the ranks of the infamous 14th Voluntary Division SS Galizien to fight against the “Jew-Bolsheviks” of the USSR, although in its original manifestation the army had boasted its own Jewish Brigade.

Commanders of the Ukrainian Galician Army were General Mykhailo Omel′ianovych-Pavlenko (10 December 1918–7 June 1919); General Oleksandr Hrekiv (9 June–5 July 1919); General Myron Tarnavsky (5 July–7 November 1919); and General Osyp Mykytka (7 November 1919–6 February 1920).