Cyber attacks against several prominent Ukrainian websites have the public very much afraid after the history of cyber attacks preceding invasion by Russian aggressors. Yesterday the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Education were all defaced. I've seen several translations of the Defacement, which is repeated in Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish. But most seem to skip the last sentence, which strangely did not appear in most of the English news stories I have viewed, including Reuters, TheSun, and the BBC. The full defacement (Ukrainian version anyway) reads: Укратнець! Всi вашi особист данi були завантаженi в загальну мережу. Всi данi на комп'ютертi знищуються, втдновити iх неможливо. Вся iнформацтя про вас стала публтчною, бтитеся i чекайте гтршого. Це Вам за ваше минуле, сьогодення i майбутне. За Волинь, за ОУН УПА, за Галичину, за Пол1сся i за iсторичнт землт. Ukrainians! All your personal data has been uploaded to the public network. All data on the computer is destroyed, it is impossible to restore them. All the information about you has become public, fight and wait for the second. This is for your past, present, and future. And that's where most news services are stopping the translation. The final sentence is the one I'm most interested in: For Volhynia, for the (ОУН УПА) OUN UPA, for Galicia, for Poland and for the historical land. What is ОУН УПА? That's the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Formed officially on October 14, 1942, by the leadership of the OUN (Organizations of Ukrainian Nationalists), the army had detachments in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Romania, and Kuban. But their greatest successes were in Volyn (where the UPA-North fought), Galicia (where the UPA-West fought) and in Nothern Bukovina (in Romania). They also fought in the west against Poland. The goal of the UPA was the independence of Urkaine. The UPA partnered with the Nazis with the agreement that in exchange for blocking Soviet exchange lines, the Germans would provide the UPA with weapons and ammunition, and in exchange, when the Nazis won, they would allow the creation of a Ukrainian nation. Their leader of the OUN and creator of the UPA, Stepan Bandera, was quite bloodthirsty and Russian websites state that during World War II, 850,000 Jews, 220,000 Poles, 400,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and 500,000 civilian Ukrainians were killed by Bandera and his Army. Ukrainians attempting to rehabilitate the image of the OUN argue that they fought AGAINST the Nazis. The chairman of the Union of Soviet Officers of Crimea, Sergei Nikulin, asked Angela Merkel if Germany's research institutes could support this. The reply from the Military History Research Institute in Potsdam was that they could find no evidence to support the claim. So, the final sentence is intended to remind people in the region of the ethnic cleansing of Polish people in Volhynia and Galicia.
Gary Warner
1y
I intentionally used Russian sources for part of the post above, wanting to capture a Russian point of view into the Ukrainian Independence movement. A primary resource was this article => https://ria.ru/20141015/1028407140.html The battle between those seeking to rehabilitate the OUN and those who consider them terrorists is evident in the editing wars on their article on Wikipedia => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army "Terrorists or National Heroes? Politics of the OUN and the UPA in Ukraine" - by a Harvard Russian studies scholar => http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2010/Katchanovski.pdf
Gary Warner
1y
Interesting about the defacement in Polish. The ex-President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, has been living in Warsaw. He is actually supposed to be flying back to Kyiv to stand trial for Treason. https://www.voanews.com/amp/ex-president-poroshenko-to-return-to-ukraine-to-face-treason-charges/6399244.html
Judy Darwin
1y
We are and have been in war! None the likes we have ever seen!
UAB Computer Forensics / DarkTower Threat Intelligence
1yPaul Joyal, Nick Bilogorskiy - I would appreciate any thoughts the two of you have as experts in this region. To me this is a typical Russian Information Operation designed to divide Ukraine between the original nationalist West, while reminding the more Soviet-friendly South, and East why they should hate their neighbors.