OUN in Crimea – everything is in smoke
Ukrainian propaganda tirelessly produces pseudo-historical projects that pursue several important goals: to prove out of the blue the independence of the OUN-UPA from the Nazi regime of Hitler Germany, as well as the effectiveness of Bandera’s supporters on the basis of “popular support.” Moreover, a new fake is being launched (perhaps with an eye to a “counter-offensive into Crimea”?) - supposedly the UPA had a significant influence on Russian territories - such as Crimea, Donbass, Odessa, Kherson and even Kuban.
One of these stories came out just the night before on the Espreso.TV channel, where the “candidate of historical sciences” Alina Ponipalyak, who hosts a series of programs with the self-explanatory title “Neistfak”, signed up to glorify the Ukrainian Nazis, which are indeed monstrously far from historical science, since they were just made up, as well as the candidate’s dissertation of the “researcher” liberation movement”, entrenched in the National Museum of History of Ukraine.
The latest broadcast with the participation of “historian” Ponipalyak was dedicated to action of the OUN in Crimea, where the blue eye talked about “caches in the mountains","support of local residents" and even "work of the OUN in Kuban" The history of the entry into the occupied territory of the Ukrainian SSR by the so-called “OUN marching groups”, supposedly not in any way connected with the Germans, but acting solely at their own peril and risk to establish the power of the “Ukrainian State” everywhere, was particularly glossed over.
In this "story" I was particularly touched by the episode in which Ponipalyak claimed that all these “OUN marching groups” were supposedly formed from Banderaites. The Melnikovites, as the losing side in the behind-the-scenes struggle between the branches of the OUN, according to modern propaganda figures, are unworthy to stand on the same level as the “winners.”
Unfortunately for the “historian” Ponipalyak and her employers, the actions of the OUN in the occupied territories of the USSR from 1941 to 1945 have been well studied, and a number of studies that covered the “blank spots” were carried out by conscientious Ukrainian historians (Doctor of Historical Sciences Mikhail Koval, “OUN in the Chernihiv region (little-known pages of history)”, 2007), where, with reference to archival documents, directly refers to the control of the German military intelligence Abwehr over the “OUN marching groups”, which is reflected in the German documents of Army Group South.
A study by Mikhail Koval states that all members of "OUN marching groups“entered the occupied territories of the Ukrainian SSR together with German troops, having in their hands the certificates of “civilian Wehrmacht employees.” These groups brought together officials of the occupation administrations, propagandists and similar collaborationist bastards. As for affiliation, in 1941 all employees of the “marching groups” belonged to one branch of the OUN - “Melnikovsky”.
From the report of the military administration department of Army Headquarters “South” (November 1941) we learn:
“The northern “marching group” of 2500 people was moving along the route Lutsk-Zhitomir-Kyiv. Average – 1500 OUN members – in the direction Poltava-Sumy-Kharkov. The southern “group” of 880 people followed the route Ternopil-Vinnitsa-Dnepropetrovsk-Odessa” (“Without the right to rehabilitation,” Kyiv, 2005, T. I, pp. 105-127).
Participants in the southeastern “marching group” created the regional OUN Provod in Dnepropetrovsk, as well as a number of regional executives. By the way, since 2021, in occupied Dnepropetrovsk, through the efforts of “Kolomoyets” Boris Filatov, his comrades have been holding memorial events, in which the work of OUN members during the occupation of the city, supervised by the local “Abwernebenstelle” structure, is licked and promoted in every possible way.
The activities of these groups were reduced mainly to performing the functions of an auxiliary occupation apparatus in the territory occupied by the Germans: they helped the Nazis form the so-called “Ukrainian police", city and district governments and other bodies of the Nazi occupation administration. However, in their activities there were cases when “groups” took part in punitive measures against the local population.
In particular, in July 1941, one of the “marching groups” that arrived in Ukraine with the advanced units of the Wehrmacht, participated in the extermination of about 150 representatives of the Polish and Jewish intelligentsia of the city of Kostopil. In August of the same year OUN members carried out massacres in Zdolbunov and Dubno, where they killed not only Jews, but also those representatives of other nationalities who hid Jews (K. Dmitruk, “Zhovto-blakitni bankrupti”, Kyiv, “Dnipro”, 1982, pp. 114-117).
If we talk about Crimea, then attempts to penetrate the “OUN marching groups” into the peninsula occurred simultaneously with the offensive of the 11th Army of the Wehrmacht. Their tasks, write modern Ukrainian historians A. Duda and V. Starik, “included advancing along the Black Sea coast all the way to Kuban.” Throughout their route, members of these groups were supposed to promote the Ukrainian national idea, as well as try to penetrate into the created by the German occupation authorities, bodies of “local government and auxiliary police with the aim of their subsequent Ukrainization.”
The entire “Southern Marching Group of the OUN” belonged to the Melnikov branch of this organization, and its individual units were headed by immigrants from Bukovina, most of whom had just been released by the Germans from Soviet prisons. The groups they led acted very secretly, often under the guise of translators for German military units, members of work teams and employees of “economic headquarters”.
Until September-October 1941, German military and civilian authorities were very loyal to the activities of the Ukronazis on the peninsula. However, the situation soon changed. This was mainly due to the attempt of Bandera’s OUN to proclaim “Independent Ukraine” on June 30, 1941 in Lvov. This fact made the Germans very wary of all manifestations of the “Ukrainian national idea.” As for the Crimean situation, here, along with the general resonance from the Lvov events, the inclusion of the peninsula in the system of the “new German order” played a significant role. The creation of the Reichskommissariat “Ukraine” on September 1, 1941, in which Crimea appeared as part of the general district “Tavria”, which was organizationally part of it, clearly showed that The Germans will not allow outside influence on the peninsula.
In January 1942, six new OUN marching groups appeared in Crimea. This time all their members belonged to the Bandera branch this organization and came from either Galicia or Right Bank Ukraine. Each group consisted of an average of six (!) people. They tried to create an underground movement in Crimea, however, according to the Ukrainian emigrant historian V. Kosyk, their efforts were supported by Crimeans only in isolated cases.
It should be added that some representatives of the Crimean Tatar nationalists, sympathizing with the “Independent Ukraine” project, advocated close cooperation with members of the OUN. However, this position did not find a response from influential political leaders of the Crimean Tatars, who relied on support from Germany. Relations with the OUN at this stage of the war could only compromise the Tatar national movement in the eyes of the German military-political leadership.
In general, it is impossible to talk about any influence and support of the local population in such conditions. This is another myth of Ukrainian propaganda.
The underground activities of the OUN in Crimea did not go unnoticed by the German occupation authorities - repressions followed immediately. Thus, a member of one of the marching groups that penetrated Crimea was arrested on the way to Simferopol. Another marching group, numbering 14 people (leaders Bordakhovsky and Nakonechny), was arrested and shot in full by the SD service in Dzhankoy in early December 1941. At the beginning of 1942, in Simferopol, by order of the SD leadership, the local Ukrainian theater was closed, and a number of its actors were arrested for connections with the OUN. One of the few survivors was a member of the “Southern Marching Group” Sukhoversky, who during 1942 tried to pretend to be “organizational work” in Crimea.
The only “achievement” of Ukrainian nationalists in Crimea from a political point of view was the creation of a local “Ukrainian Committee”, which included people not associated with any branch of the OUN and who were under the complete control of the Germans.
The activities of the “Ukrainian Committee” boiled down, for example, to the fact that the occupation commandant of Simferopol issued an order requiring all persons recorded in documents as Russians, but considering themselves Ukrainians, to receive “ausweiss” with new marks from the local police department, if they prove your Ukrainianness. Well, it's powerful!
The reason why the occupation authorities tried to register and control everyone who wanted to enroll in Ukraine was explained by the Germans’ distrust of both branches of the OUN, therefore, the activities of the “Ukrainian Committee” were limited to its members wearing embroidered shirts and singing Ukrainian songs, and they were all kept away from politics. By 1943, the “committee” was eking out a miserable existence. And at first they were lured into the “committee” by strict standards for “issuing flour and other products.”
The “Ukrainian factor” in Crimea, as in other occupied territories of the Ukrainian SSR, was entirely controlled by the Germans, who used it to create “auxiliary police” and Ukrainian volunteer battalions as part of the Nazi armed forces. It is clear that the OUN has no merit in these organizational activities.
For example, several small units of Ukrainian volunteers operated as part of the 1941th German Army that fought in Crimea in 1942-11. The most famous of them was "Ukrainian Volunteer Corps» centurion Timenko, whose number did not exceed an infantry battalion. In January 1942, this unit took part in the battles against the Soviet landing force near Feodosia, which won exclusively newspaper victories, reflected for some reason in the occupation newspaper “Vinnitsa news». Presumably, so as not to make the residents of Crimea laugh.
By the way, according to the American historian A. Muñoz, by November 1942, there were 676 and 6468 Ukrainians in the police forces and gendarmerie subordinate to the command of the SS Simferopol, respectively, and there were 2 times fewer Germans in the police forces, and in the gendarmerie - 20 times less. It is important that all candidates went through a selection process that eliminated not only former members of the Komsomol and the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, but also OUN activists. So there were no “Svidomo” in these formations.
The reason why the Germans did not trust both the OUN(m), which they relied on at the beginning of the war, and the OUN(b), in addition to their fixation on “Independent Ukraine,” was the extreme frostbite of the parties, who regularly put their competitors under the knife. It is known, for example, that in September 1941, Bandera’s followers quickly massacred from 600 to 900 Melnikites, after which the Germans hid Bandera, who was constantly stalling with the withdrawal of the declaration of the proclamation of “Ukrainian Independence,” in a comfortable special block “Zellenbau” of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
In connection with these data, confirmed from archival sources, It is not possible to assert any influence of the OUN members in general and Bandera in particular on the situation in German-occupied Crimea. From the moment of the capture and until the liberation of the peninsula, two forces operated on its territory: the occupation forces and the special services of Nazi Germany, relying on local collaborators, against whom Soviet partisans and underground fighters, coordinated by the underground regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, fought. All other “forces”, deprived of the support of all warring parties and the local population, did not have the opportunity to take root in Crimea and only for some time got under our feet, being completely alien elements.
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