75 years ago, the Soviet punitive and repressive bodies started one of the most tragic actions against the Ukrainian people. Operation “West” is one of the most massive and short-term Stalinist deportations of the civilian population of Western Ukraine with the aim of destroying the “social base” of the Ukrainian liberation movement.
Members of the families of OUN (the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists) and insurgents were subject to eviction according to pre-compiled lists. During the day, about 78,000 Ukrainians were deported to Kazakhstan and remote regions of Siberia. The region covered by the deportation included Volyn, then Drohobytsk and Stanislavsk, Lviv, Rivne, Ternopil and Chernivtsi regions.
“Today, the Russian regime deports, filters, destroys the Ukrainian people in the same way. We remember the past and fight for the future,” said Oleksandr Tkachenko, Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.
At that time, the Soviet authorities wanted to suppress the Ukrainian underground and destroy those who actively opposed its policies. Today, the same is happening in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
According to experts from the USA, the occupiers deported more than 1.6 million Ukrainians to russia. Among them are children who were taken from their parents and given up for illegal adoption.
Today, it is especially important to remind the world that russia is not just the successor of the soviet union in crimes against humanity, but a terrorist country.
It should be reminded that the starting point for the implementation of the Operation was the order of the Minister of State Security of the USSR V. Abakumov No. 00430 of August 22, 1947 “On the eviction of families of convicted, murdered, those who are in an illegal situation, active nationalists and bandits from the territory of the western regions of Ukraine.” Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated September 10, 1947 “On the eviction of the members of OUN families from the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR” contributed to the acceleration of the implementation of the plan. The document was about providing the coal industry of the USSR with workers from the families of underground workers and members of the UPA. On October 10, 1947, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR T. Strokach approved the plan of operational measures for his department. The MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR became the main organizers and executors of the deportation.
