Scarred By War: Conflicts For Ukrainian Land Through The 20th Century

Austrian soldiers in a trench just south of Rivne in November 1915.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Empire controlled most of the territory of today's Ukraine, while the Austro-Hungarians held a western portion. The two enemy powers battled for control of the region through most of World War I.

A Skoda "siege mortar" being operated by Austro-Hungarian forces somewhere in today's Ukraine in 1915. The mortar lobbed shells weighing 384 kilograms each and was later put to use by the Nazis in World War II. 

Austro-Hungarian forces crossing the Bug River in 1915. The waterway forms part of today’s border between Poland and Ukraine.
 

Russian General Aleksei Brusilov in Rivne in October 1915.

The tsarist general was responsible for one of the most lethal offensives in military history when Russian forces attacked Austro-Hungarian lines in the Lviv and Volyn regions in 1916. More than 1 million men on both sides were wounded or killed in the Brusilov Offensive, which was deemed a success for the Entente powers. Brusilov joined the Red Army after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Austro-Hungarian forces gather under a viaduct destroyed by retreating Russian forces at Zhovnivka, near Ternopil, in 1915.

German soldiers on Kyiv's Maidan, probably in March 1918.

After the 1917 revolution that swept Lenin's Bolsheviks to power, Russia exited World War I, but formal negotiations for a peace deal with the central powers failed. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their allies then charged across much of today's Ukraine in an offensive dubbed Operation Fist-Punch before Russia's new communist rulers finally agreed to a costly peace deal. 

German troops looking at captured Russian warships in Sevastopol harbor in May 1918. 

In the final months of WWI, German forces briefly allied with Ukrainian nationalist fighters in Crimea to push Bolshevik fighters out of the peninsula. 

Ukrainians during the German occupation in 1918 hold a portrait of Taras Shevchenko in central Kyiv. Shevchenko was a Ukrainian-language poet and figurehead for Ukrainian independence movements. 

An improvised armored vehicle known as Piłsudski's Tank, after Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski. The war machine was probably photographed in Lviv and bears the Polish white eagle and an American flag.

Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, ethnic Poles and Ukrainians fought a vicious war for control of the Lviv, Zakarpattya, and other regions of today's western Ukraine. 

A Polish Army guard outside a conference building in Lviv in February 1919 as French, British, Polish, and Ukrainian delegations met to negotiate an end to the Polish-Ukrainian war.

After the conflict, Lviv was recognized as part of Poland. Lviv endured Soviet, then Nazi, then Soviet rule once more, until Ukraine gained independence in the Soviet collapse of 1991.

Nazi troops pass a Soviet border post in the Lviv region in June 1941. 

When Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, sweeping across the U.S.S.R.'s western borders, Soviet Ukraine bore much of the brunt of the attack. Millions of Ukrainian civilians were killed in the invasion and subsequent Nazi occupation and hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Soviet Ukraine were singled out for extermination. 

Italian Bersaglieri (sharpshooters), distinctive for the black feathers worn in their helmets, move through a cornfield during the Nazi-led invasion of Soviet Ukraine in 1941.

Italian forces fighting in the Soviet Union were largely wiped out by the Red Army, and tens of thousands of Italian soldiers died in Soviet captivity. 

Ukrainian women in traditional clothing parade under Nazi banners in Lviv during an official visit by Hans Frank, the German ruler of Nazi-occupied Poland. 

Many Ukrainian nationalists took an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" stance to the Nazi invasion, crediting the Germans with driving out the communist Bolsheviks. Some Ukrainians actively participated in the mass killings of Jews, while others, "individuals and sometimes entire villages," risked everything to shelter Jews from the Nazis.

A young partisan woman, apparently after her capture by invading Axis troops, at an unspecified location in today's Ukraine in 1941. 

A Nazi soldier in the Great Lavra Bell Tower in Kyiv in September 1941. A bridge over the Dnieper River can be seen burning in the background,.

 

An anti-Nazi partisan milking a cow in 1943. 

Destroyed buildings on Kyiv's Khreschatyk Street in 1942. Kyiv was heavily damaged in the battle for the city and subsequent explosions of mines left by retreating Red Army forces. 

Soviet soldiers prepare to cross the Dnieper River in 1943. The sign on the left says: "To Kyiv!" 

After the Red Army's defeat of German-led forces at Stalingrad, the tide of the Nazi advance across the Soviet Union turned. Fighting yet again returned to the territory of today's Ukraine as the Soviet Red Army pushed west. 

A Soviet military parade held on Kyiv's Khreschatyk Street in 1958. After the Soviet victory in WWII, Ukraine once more became a Soviet Republic until 1991, until Ukraine gained independence in the Soviet collapse of 1991.