“Launch Intelligence and Propaganda Work on Ukrainian Emigrés”
As a result of the Second World War, a huge number of Ukrainians found themselves outside their homeland for various reasons. Some of them returned to the USSR through voluntary or forced repatriation. The rest did not want to return mostly for political reasons and remained in Europe, South America, the United States and Canada. The processes taking place in the environment of Ukrainian émigrés of that time became subject to special attention of the Soviet special services. The MGB/KGB infiltrated their agents into various organizations and movements, trying to split them, provoke conflicts with local authorities, and conducting propaganda actions to justify Soviet policy. This is evidenced by declassified documents from the archive of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.
3/22/2023
Churchill's Speech in Fulton and Ukrainians’ Reaction to It
On March 5, 1946, in the American city of Fulton, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill delivered a historic speech in which he declared the appearance of the “iron curtain”, the current challenges and threats to the democratic world from the “communist russia” that arose after the end of the Second World War, and the need to guarantee the security of mankind, prevent new wars and put an end to tyranny. Immediately, a “group of Ukrainian politicians” published a “Response to Mr. Churchill”, a copy of which is kept in the archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.
3/8/2023
Forged Letters of the Leader of the OUN Shtul-Zhdanovych to His Father. KGB’s Writing
The story of the third head of the OUN, Shtul-Zhdanovych, is a vivid example of how at all times the bodies of the NKVD/MGB/KGB of the USSR tried to compromise and discredit prominent figures of the Ukrainian national liberation movement. In the archival funds of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, documentary evidence was found of how, by forging letters to his father, adding half-truths (or even outright lies) to real information, Moscow cast a shadow over one of the leaders of Ukrainian emigration, spreading fabrications about his alleged cooperation with Soviet state security bodies, thereby sowing distrust and discord among Ukrainians, and against this background trying to inflict an irreparable blow to the Ukrainian national idea.
3/3/2023
An Airplane for OUN
Along with the materials on the creation by the Union of Hetmanists-Statesmen in Canada and the United States in the 1930s of schools for training Ukrainian pilots, in the archives there are documents on the OUN representatives’ attempts to purchase an airplane and organize a flight school. Then the information about this came to the attention of the GPU and made the leadership of the Stalinist special services in Moscow worry.
2/15/2023
Yevhen Vretsiona. The Chief of Intelligence of the OUN Foreign Center
Among the foreign centers of Ukrainian political emigration, the most interesting for the Soviet special services were the formations of OUN, and in them – leading figures and ideologues, as well as senior staff of the Security Service (SB), which combined the functions of intelligence and counterintelligence and often prevented the Kremlin agents’ penetration into the ranks of émigré organizations. All the leaders of the Security Service of OUN were taken into active operational development as particularly dangerous enemies of the Soviet government. One of those was Yevhen Vretsiona, who in the declassified archival documents of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine is mentioned as the chief of intelligence of the “OUN Foreign Center” with the underground pseudonym “Volianskyi”.
2/9/2023
Service “A” of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR Against Foreign Centers of the OUN
New documents from the archives of the Intelligence make it possible to look behind the scenes of especially secret units of the Soviet special services and see how moscow tried to split the Ukrainian national liberation movement, as well as to understand why the kremlin, even in the 1980s, was so afraid of OUN leaders and ideologues and in every possible way tried to discredit or liquidate them.
1/11/2023
The First Winter Campaign of the UPR Army and Its Commander Omelyanovych-Pavlenko
The archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine contain materials about the First Winter Campaign of the UPR Army (December 6, 1919 – May 6, 1920) into the rear of the Red and Volunteer Armies, during which the Ukrainian Army successfully used raid methods of fighting numerous enemies and which, according to military historians, is the most heroic page of military art of the period of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921. These documents are kept in a multivolume case against Otaman Yurko Tyutyunnyk and a separate case-form on Mikhailo Omelyanovych-Pavlenko, who led the legendary Campaign.
12/6/2022
Oleh Olzhych. Recruiting: Impossible. To Liquidate
Another person has been added to the list of leaders of the Ukrainian National Liberation Movement, who were meant to be liquidated by Stalin’s special services on the Kremlin’s instructions. Andriy Melnyk, Stepan Bandera and Mykola Kapustyanskyi the plans of whose assassination have recently become known from the intelligence documents, have now been joined by Oleh Kandyba (pseudonym – Olzhych) – one of the leaders of the Provid (leadership- Transl.) of Ukrainian Nationalists, social and political activist, poet, archeologist. The declassified documents from the Branch State Archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine shed light on how it happened.
11/17/2022
“Promethean Nations Must Win the Struggle Against Russia”
Documents were found in the archive of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, which testify that one of the subjects to activity of the GPU/NKVD/MGB/KGB of the USSR for many years was the so-called Promethean movement and especially its Ukrainian component. Moscow opened operational cases against Ukrainian leaders who actively supported Poles – the founders of the movement, and tried in every possible way to hinder their activities. This information, in particular about the Warsaw Prometheus Club, branches in France, Finland, Turkey and Harbin, may be of some value to researchers of history and supporters of the Promethean movement, whose followers still periodically hold international forums.
10/27/2022
The Unknown Plan for Assassination of Stepan Bandera
The Branch State Archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine contain materials, hitherto unknown to the general public, about the preparation by the NKGB bodies at the end of 1944 of the operation to liquidate one of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera in Berlin. The plan of special measures of the 4th Directorate of the NKSB of the Ukrainian SSR, certificates, diagrams and other documents published for the first time make it possible to significantly supplement the history of the attempts and assassination of the leader of the so-called revolutionary wing of the OUN and to reveal the mechanisms of the activity of the Soviet special services aimed at destroying the Ukrainian national liberation movement.
10/15/2022
