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The Ukrainian Insurgent Army () was a Ukrainian Guerrilla army formed on October 14 , 1942 , in Volhynia . The UPA was the Military branch of the Organization Of Ukrainian Nationalists . The main goal of the UPA was an independent Ukraine . Its leaders were Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera . The UPA fought a broad spectrum of military forces in the area: the German Wehrmacht , the Polish Armia Krajowa and the Soviet Red Army . After World War II , UPA Partisan units continued fighting the Soviet Union and Communist Poland until the early 1950s, especially in Carpathian Mountains regions. ]] The UPA strove to and often succeeded in removing Poles from areas that it regarded as indigenously Ukrainian. Some estimates have put the Polish death toll between 80,000 and 100,000 (see Massacre Of Poles In Volhynia for more details) and many historians, particularly in Poland, use the term Genocide or Ethnic Cleansing to denote the events. Ukrainian researchers counter with similar allegations of mass deportations, murder and mayhem by Armia Krajowa and other guerilla forces aimed at terrorizing Ukrainian inhabitants of Volhynia. In early 1944 UPA insurgents ambushed and killed Nikolai Vatutin , the famous commander of the Battle Of Kursk , who led the liberation of Kiev . Famous Soviet Intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov , Metropolitan Oleksiy (Hromadsky) of the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church and Polish general Karol Świerczewski were also killed by UPA insurgents. Soviet officials of all levels, from high rank NKVD and military officers to the school teachers and postal workers were also targeted. The UPA's activities are sometimes seen as a response to actions of the inter-war Polish government, which sought to limit the number of Ukrainian institutions in the same areas, often regarded as indigenously Polish. However, the scope of such actions, although unquestionably anti-Ukrainian, was mostly limited to cultural suppression. During the Soviet years UPA was officially mentioned only in negative terms, and was considered to have been a terrorist organisation. After Ukraine gained independence in 1991 , former UPA members struggled for official recognition as legitimate combatants, with the accompanying pensions and benefits due to war veterans. They have also strived to hold parades and commemorations of their own, especially in Western Ukraine. This in turn led to opposition from the Ukrainian veterans of the Soviet Army , and disapproval from the Russia n government. So far the attempts to reconcile the two groups of veterans have made little progress. An attempt to hold a joint parade in Kiev in May, 2005 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II proved unsuccessful. The assessment of the historical role of UPA remains a controversial issue in Ukrainian society although Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko joined several public organizations in Ukrained in calls for reconciliation, pensions and other benefits for UPA veterans that would equate them in status with the veterans of the Soviet Army , and a better understanding of their role in the chaotic times of UPA operations. SEE ALSO:
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