title: Marina Diamandis

text: Diamandis's debut single "Obsessions" was released on 14 February 2009 through Neon Gold Records, while her first extended play "The Crown Jewels EP" followed on 1 June. That summer, she performed at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend, the Glastonbury Festival, and the Reading and Leeds Festivals. She also performed at iTunes Live, releasing a second EP in July 2009 of performances from that festival. In December 2009, Diamandis was ranked in second place on the Sound of 2010 poll organized by BBC, behind Ellie Goulding. She was one of three nominees for the Critics' Choice Award at the 2010 BRIT Awards, which also went to Goulding. "Mowgli's Road" was released on 13 November 2009, with Diamandis describing it as "uncommercial". Despite this, it received attention after its video was shared by the likes of Perez Hilton and Kanye West.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: "Mowgli's Road" was followed by "Hollywood" on 1 February 2010, which reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart, and was eventually certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Diamandis's debut studio album "The Family Jewels" was released on 15 February 2010. It debuted at number five on the UK Albums Chart with first-week sales of 27,618 copies, and was eventually certified gold by the BPI. A 2012 press release from Atlantic Records noted that the album had sold 300,000 copies.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Atlantic Records signed Diamandis to Chop Shop Records in the United States in March 2010. Through the label, she released her third extended play "The American Jewels EP", and "The Family Jewels" in the United States. The latter project debuted at number 138 on the US "Billboard" 200 with first-week sales of 4,000 copies, and on "Billboard"s Top Heatseekers and Top Rock Albums charts, where it peaked at number 2 and 49 respectively.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Later in 2010, Diamandis released three more singles from the album; "I Am Not a Robot", "Oh No!" and "Shampain", which peaked at 26, 38 and 141 in the UK charts. In October 2010, she won Best UK & Ireland Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards. To further promote "The Family Jewels", Diamandis embarked on The Family Jewels Tour, which visited Europe, North America and Australia throughout 2010 and 2011. In January 2011, in an Australian radio interview, she expressed disappointment at her career, particularly in her failure to attract an American audience. She put this down to inaction by her label and American listeners' contemporary taste for "pumping beats" by artists such as Lady Gaga.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: In the summer of 2011, Diamandis and Swedish recording artist Robyn performed as the opening acts for American recording artist Katy Perry's California Dreams Tour. On 30 September, Diamandis released the track "Radioactive" through the iTunes Store. It peaked at number 25 on the UK Singles Chart. Her second studio album was preceded by its lead single "Primadonna" in April 2012. The song is notable for being Diamandis's highest-charting track on the UK Singles Chart, where it reached number 11. It is certified Silver by the BPI, gold in Austria and the United States, and platinum by the respective authorities in Australia, Denmark and New Zealand.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: The final product "Electra Heart" is a concept album lyrically united by the ideas of "female identity" and "a recent breakup". Diamandis created the titular character "Electra Heart" as a protagonist for the project. She portrays the personas "Teen Idle", "Primadonna", "Homewrecker", and "Housewife", which represent several female archetypes of stereotypical American culture. The project was released on 27 April 2012, and debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart with first-week sales of 21,358 copies. It became Diamandis's first chart-topping album in the United Kingdom, although at the time it was additionally distinguished as the lowest-selling number-one record of the 21st century in the country. The album was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry and the Irish Recorded Music Association. "Electra Heart" debuted at 31 on the US "Billboard" 200 with 12,000 copies sold its first week, and as of May 2015 has sold 150,000 copies in that country.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: "Power & Control" and "How to Be a Heartbreaker" were subsequent single releases, with the latter missing the cut-off for initial inclusion on the record. However, it was featured in the revised track listing for the American version. The two songs were minor chart entries in the UK, and the latter was certified gold in the United States for sales over 500,000 copies. Throughout 2012, Diamandis travelled for The Lonely Hearts Club Tour, which her second headlining concert tour, and the Mylo Xyloto Tour headlined by Coldplay, for which she served as an opening act. On 8 August 2013, she released a music video for the previously unreleased title track "Electra Heart". It depicted the death of the character, and symbolically ended the promotional campaign for "Electra Heart".


title: Marina Diamandis

text: After spending one month in New York City, Diamandis announced in February 2013 that she had begun writing material for an upcoming third studio album. The single "Froot" was released on 10 October 2014, her 29th birthday, and announced as the title track.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: The album was announced to be released on 3 April 2015, with a new track from the album being announced each month. However, due to an Internet leak, the release was brought forward. Entirely produced by Diamandis and David Kosten, the album was praised for its cohesive sound. "Froot" debuted at number 8 on the "Billboard" 200 chart, and is her highest-charting album in the United States. "Froot" peaked at 10 in the UK.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: In early 2015, it was announced that Diamandis would perform at Lollapalooza Brazil, Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Boston Calling Music Festival that March, April and May respectively. From October 2015 to the following October, she embarked on the Neon Nature Tour across Europe and the Americas. Each performance was split into three acts; one for each of her albums, with most of the songs coming from "Froot". Her performance at the House of Blues in Boston in November of that year was broadcast live by Yahoo. During a question-and-answer video, Diamandis said that subsequent tours would be different, as her usual tours had been "a hard lifestyle". In April 2016, she said she would take a break from music after her tour. She returned to performing two months later, clarifying that she would rather work on a consistent basis than a cycle of touring and resting.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: In June 2016, Diamandis told "Fuse" that she had begun writing new material for upcoming songs. In December 2016, electronic group Clean Bandit confirmed that "Disconnect", a song they had performed with Diamandis at the 2015 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, would be released on their new album. It was released as a single in June 2017, and she performed it with them at Glastonbury.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: To mark a new stage in her career, Diamandis announced via Twitter in 2018 that she would be dropping her "and the Diamonds" moniker to release music as simply "Marina". She explained that "It took me well over a year to figure out that a lot of my identity was tied up in who I was as an artist and there wasn't much left of who "I" was".


title: Marina Diamandis

text: In November 2018, a second collaboration with Clean Bandit and Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, "Baby", was released. It peaked at number 15 in the UK. On 11 December of the same year, Diamandis performed at the Royal Variety Performance alongside Clean Bandit with their song "Baby". On 31 January 2019, Diamandis teased the new album by posting a picture on her Instagram with the caption "8 Days". The day after, she revealed in an interview that the new album would come out sometime in early 2019. On 6 February 2019, it was revealed that the title of the lead single of the album would be "Handmade Heaven", which was subsequently released two days later. Her bipartite fourth studio album "Love + Fear" was then released in two halves on 4 and 26 April 2019.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: On 29 April 2019, Diamandis embarked on her Love + Fear Tour with six UK gigs, including sold-out dates in London and Manchester. In July 2019, she was scheduled to play a number of music festivals across Europe and the UK, before taking the tour to North America with 19 dates across the US and Canada in September and October. This would then be followed by a second run of UK dates and a short European tour. She was featured on Gryffin's song (also featuring Model Child) "If I Left the World""", released on 23 October 2019.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: On 16 January 2020, Diamandis posted two photos on Instagram with the caption "Writing songs in Paris". On 24 January 2020, she posted a photo on Instagram with the caption "Album 5". On 7 February 2020, Diamandis released "About Love" from the soundtrack for the movie "". On 14 February 2020, she announced her upcoming April tour, "The Inbetweenie Tour". However, on 16 March 2020, she announced that this tour would be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: On 8 March 2020, she posted a snippet of a new song named "Man's World" on her Instagram story. The song was released on 18 November 2020. The single debuted at number 99 on the Official UK Singles Sales Chart and at number 96 on the Official UK Singles Download Chart after two days release.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: On 12 April 2021, Diamandis announced a new single, "Purge the Poison", alongside a website and a mailing list to accompany it. Later that day, her web team accidentally uploaded the music video onto YouTube, resulting in an early leak of the song and music video. Diamandis released the single cover and release date soon after, possibly as a result of the early leak. "Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land" was released on 11 June 2021. The album was well received by critics. The album's fifth single, "Happy Loner", was released on 3 December 2021 to coincide with the deluxe version of the album which released on 7 January 2022.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: On 1 October 2021, Diamandis announced on Instagram that she started working on her sixth studio album.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: On 27 April 2022, Diamandis announced that "Electra Heart" would be getting an expanded version, which was called "Electra Heart:" Platinum Blonde Edition. The album was released digitally two days later, with the vinyl release following on 23 September 2022.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: On 22 May 2022, Diamandis announced while performing in London that "Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land" would be her last album with Atlantic Records. She had been signed to the record label for the past 14 years.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Diamandis has a musical style consisting of indie pop, art pop, electropop, synth-pop, experimental pop, bubblegum pop, and disco-pop. She is known for her mezzo-soprano vocal abilities. As a child, she would take inspiration from the differing musical tastes of her parents – Dolly Parton, Enya and George Michael from her mother, and Haris Alexiou from her father – while also admiring pop acts of the era including the Spice Girls, Britney Spears and S Club 7. Diamandis has said that "Madonna was the reason I wanted to be a pop star from the age of 15"; however she also stated that she did not listen to music "properly" until the age of 19, when she took influence from acts including PJ Harvey, Fiona Apple and the Distillers. She began smoking two years later in an attempt to sound like the Distillers' frontwoman Brody Dalle, "but it never worked, and now I'm just stuck with a bad habit."


title: Marina Diamandis

text: She has cited Dalle and Spears as her musical influences, and has expressed a particular interest in Daniel Johnston and the lo-fi production he uses. She has jokingly stated that "I probably have a bit of a different sound because I don't really know what I'm doing!", referencing her lack of formal musical training. Diamandis has synesthesia, and as a result associates particular colours with musical notes and days of the week.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: A self-described "DIY musician" and "indie artist with pop goals", Diamandis considers her music to be "alternate pop". Paul Lester wrote in 2008 that Diamandis's musical direction was "hard to fathom", given the frequency with which she alternated "simple keyboards-based ballads" and "quirky new wave-inflected numbers". Whereas "The Family Jewels" incorporated prominent elements of new wave music, "Electra Heart" was heavily inspired by electropop musical styles. Diamandis opined that the United States was more welcoming of said musical transition than the United Kingdom, and suggested that the American audience embraced the humour behind the latter "tongue-in-cheek record". "Froot" is a pop record, with elements of europop and pop rock.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: At the start of her career, Diamandis was compared to other British female singer-songwriters, with Paul Lester from "The Guardian" writing that she had a "zeitgeist-y female essence". Though she took exception at such comparisons, and said that all she shared with Kate Nash was "a vagina and a keyboard". During the "Electra Heart" era, she called comparisons to Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Lana Del Rey "really annoying", preferring to be classed as herself. Her vocals have been compared to those of Karen O, Regina Spektor, Kate Bush, Florence Welch, Britney Spears, and Siouxsie Sioux, with an androgynous timbre akin to those of Annie Lennox and Heather Small. When reviewing "The Family Jewels", Joe Copplestone from "PopMatters" noted that Diamandis's vocal delivery occasionally overpowers the "inventive" melodies showcased in her songs.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Diamandis's lyrical content typically analyses components of human behaviour. She has noted that she would have become a psychologist had she been unsuccessful in the music industry. The song "Savages", from the album "Froot", reflects on humanity's proneness to violent acts. Rory Cashin of "Slate" lauded Diamandis's lyrics as "esoteric", likening her to an "emotionally intelligent outsider who knew how to perfectly articulate those weird thoughts and reactions we all have but would never admit to". Laurence Day of "The Line of Best Fit" considered "Froot" to be "an anthology of astute nihilistic, existentialist discussions".


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Diamandis has identified Sophia Loren, Leigh Lezark, Shirley Manson and Gwen Stefani as her fashion icons, with Asli Polat and Mary Benson being among her favourite designers. As part of Selfridges' "Sound of Music", Diamandis and Paloma Faith designed their own window display for the London Oxford Street branch in May 2010, and additionally appeared as "live mannequins" for the display. In November, Diamandis was featured on the website for the British edition of "Vogue", where she contributed to the "Today I'm Wearing" column that month. In February 2011, she became a brand ambassador for Max Factor. In 2013, she launched a fashion brand named 11 Diamonds and designed a line of T-shirts for it, but has had little involvement with it since.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: According to Emily Jupp of "The Independent", despite various changes in musical direction, an "unconventional fashion sense" has been a constant in Diamandis's career. In the music video for the song "How to be a Heartbreaker", she "subverts the norm" by wearing more clothes than male models in the background. She reflected that "I don't think it suits me to wear very little clothing, it just wouldn't feel right. I'd rather people listen to what I have to say instead of staring at my bum". In 2011, while promoting "The Family Jewels", Diamandis described her fashion styles as "vintage, cheerleader, and cartoon". Four years later, she described her costumes then as "very badly put together vintage, kind of glittery ensemble", and her outfits for "Froot" as a "mix of '70s with digital fiberware ... something surreal and '70s".


title: Marina Diamandis

text: She has been described as a "pop enigma", an artist who "never felt like she belonged to the masses" and one with a cult following. It was written in "Billboard" in June 2016 that she is among "pop artists with major fanbases in the U.S. and a consistent stream of excellent music who are nonetheless kept a tier below these other musicians in terms of national presence, because they never had that one hit that everyone simply has to know them from". She told "Vice News" in February 2016 that "I'm not really a [pop] starry person. Stars are people who equal celebrity culture. I don't really feel part of that at all".


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Diamandis estimates that gay people comprise 60% of her concert audience. She attributes her status as a gay icon to her campness and sense of humour, in addition to lyrics on being a societal outsider. In 2012, she won the Best Music Award at gay magazine "Attitude"'s award show. She headlined an NYC Pride event in June 2016 in the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub shooting, wearing a rainbow-striped cape. Diamandis plays down her popularity in the gay community in order to avoid sounding like a "cliché pop star", and hopes for a time when acceptance will mean that people do not label themselves by their sexuality.


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Despite knowing the elements of Greek Orthodox, Diamandis states that she was not raised Christian and identifies as an atheist. She considers herself an introvert and revealed on Twitter that she is an INFJ in the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator. One of her songs that is especially focused on her introverted side and appreciating solitude is "Solitaire".


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Diamandis has frequently been an advocate of feminism and equal gender rights, sharing her social views in music, interviews and on social media. She had been named "the sound of feminism" in "Nylon" magazine. The singer has been critical of traditional gender roles and societal prejudice towards women in general, as well as in the pop landscape and music industry. Her second album "Electra Heart" focused on exploring the feminine psyche and the ways women are embodied in American cultural stereotypes, with the track "Sex Yeah" often described as a "feminist statement". A few years later, Diamandis decided to work with an exclusively all-female team on her fifth studio album "Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land" in order to produce a longer feminist narrative. She explained that "this story can only be told by women".


title: Marina Diamandis

text: In 2020, Diamandis started speaking openly about growing out her grey hair on Instagram to challenge unhealthy beauty standards. "I started getting silver / grey hairs around 15 years old. I've been dying my hair since I was 22 because I literally thought I had no other option. Grey equalled old to me – something most women are told is a bad, bad thing. Anything that symbolised this simply HAD to be covered!".


title: Marina Diamandis

text: Diamandis has openly spoken about dealing with depression and anxiety. Her song "Happy", the opening song from the album "Froot", discusses her battle with depression, while the whole record is dedicated to celebrating happiness. The song was preceded by tracks from previous records such as "Numb", "Are You Satisfied?", "Living Dead", and "Teen Idle", which were written about her depression from her teenage years and twenties. In 2017, she began a Tumblr blog named "Marinabook" where she discussed a variety of topics surrounding mental health. To celebrate World Mental Health Day 2017 (and her 32nd birthday), Diamandis posted an essay about her battle with her mental health struggles. Over the years she attended various psychology courses, which earned her an alias of a "pop psychologist".


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: The Hitman's Bodyguard is a 2017 American action comedy film directed by Patrick Hughes and starring Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, and Salma Hayek. The film follows a bodyguard (Reynolds) who must protect a convicted hitman (Jackson), who is on his way to testify at the International Criminal Court against a sadistic, Eastern European dictator (Oldman).


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: "The Hitman's Bodyguard" was released in the United States on August 18, 2017, and grossed $183 million worldwide. Critics praised the performances and chemistry of Reynolds and Jackson and the action sequences, but criticized the clichéd plot and execution. A sequel, "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard", was released on June 16, 2021.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: Michael Bryce lives a luxurious life as a successful UK-based private bodyguard, until his client Takashi Kurosawa, an international arms dealer, is assassinated on his watch. Two years later, the fallen-from-grace Bryce survives by protecting drug-addicted corporate executives in London.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: Meanwhile, Vladislav Dukhovich, the vicious dictator of Belarus, is on trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. Unable to secure solid evidence or testimony against him, the prosecution's last hope is incarcerated hitman Darius Kincaid, who agrees to testify against Dukhovich in exchange for the release of his wife Sonia from prison. Led by Interpol Agent Roussel, an armed convoy escorts Kincaid from the UK to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: With the aid of treacherous Interpol Assistant Director Jean Foucher, Dukhovich's men successfully ambush the convoy as it passes through Coventry and kill most of the security team. Kincaid eliminates the attackers and Agent Roussel, the sole survivor, takes Kincaid to an Interpol safehouse in the city. Realizing that the agency cannot be entrusted with the mission due to a possible leak, she enlists the help of Bryce, her ex, to escort and protect Kincaid on the way to The Hague.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: They hitchhike to a ferry going to Amsterdam, where Sonia is being held. Kincaid reveals to Bryce that he was the one who killed Kurosawa, having spotted him by chance while on another job, causing an outraged Bryce to abandon him. As Bryce evaluates his past mistakes at a beer stand, Dukhovich's men attack Kincaid. Bryce regains his composure and helps Kincaid escape, but is captured in the process. As he's being tortured, Kincaid arrives and rescues Bryce.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: After reconciling their differences, they arrive at The Hague with seconds to spare. Kincaid testifies that Dukhovich hired him to assassinate a political rival, but Kincaid witnessed Dukhovich carry out a mass execution, and uploaded the massacre photos to a secret FTP site that he provides to the court.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: Dukhovich admits guilt, then resorts to his backup plan: bombing the court to escape. Foucher leaves the court before the bombing and Roussel deduces he was the traitor. In the confusion after the bomb goes off, Dukhovich seizes a gun to kill Kincaid, but Bryce dives in front of the bullet, taking the hit. Injured, he tells Kincaid to stop Dukhovich.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: Foucher and Roussel struggle until Bryce shoots him to save Roussel. Kincaid pursues Dukhovich to the roof where he attempts to escape by helicopter. Kincaid destroys the helicopter and angrily kicks Dukhovich off the roof to his death for shooting Bryce.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: Kincaid is rearrested for his various crimes but breaks out of Belmarsh Prison several months later so he and Sonia can celebrate their anniversary in the bar in Honduras where they first met. As a wild bar brawl breaks out around them, they kiss.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: In May 2011, David Ellison's Skydance Media acquired the action script "The Hitman's Bodyguard" written by Tom O'Connor. The script was among the top 2011 Black List of unproduced screenplays. While originally intended as a drama, the script underwent a "frantic" two-week rewrite to be remade into a comedy several weeks prior to filming.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: On November 4, 2015, Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Gary Oldman were cast in the film, which Jeff Wadlow would direct for Millennium Films. Producers would be Mark Gill, John Thompson, Matt O'Toole and Les Weldon. On February 23, 2016, Élodie Yung and Salma Hayek were cast in the film, which Lionsgate would distribute in the United States. On March 9, 2016, it was reported that Wadlow had exited the film and Patrick Hughes signed on to direct the film.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: Originally, just one scene was to be shot in Amsterdam but when Hughes visited the location and saw its surroundings he decided to move some "London scenes" to the old inner city of Amsterdam. The Coventry-based scenes were also filmed in London.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: "The Hitman's Bodyguard" grossed $75.5 million in the United States and Canada and $107.9 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $176.6 million, against a production budget between $30–69 million.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: In North America, "The Hitman's Bodyguard" was released on August 18, 2017 and was projected to gross $17–20 million from 3,350 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $8 million on its first day (including $1.65 million from Thursday night previews). It went on to open to $21.4 million, topping the box office. In its second weekend the film made $10.3 million, finishing first at the box office in what was the combined lowest-grossing weekend since September 2001. The film made another $10.5 million the following weekend, becoming the third film of 2017 to finish atop the box office for three straight weeks. However, while it made an estimated $12.9 million over the four-day Labor Day weekend, was again involved in a historically low weekend, as it was the worst combined holiday weekend since 1998.


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 43% based on 226 reviews, and an average rating of 5.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""The Hitman's Bodyguard" coasts on Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds' banter—but doesn't get enough mileage to power past an overabundance of action-comedy clichés." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score 47 out of 100, based on 42 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 80% overall positive score and a 57% "definite recommend".


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: Peter Debruge of "Variety" gave the film a positive review and called it a pleasant late-summer surprise, writing: ""The Hitman's Bodyguard" is about as close to a live-action cartoon as you're likely to get this year... That's not a style that works much of the time... but in the hands of "The Expendables 3" helmer Patrick Hughes—and more importantly, owing to the chemistry of stars Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds—it makes for a delightfully ridiculous screwball action comedy." Writing for "Rolling Stone", Peter Travers praised the cast, giving it 2.5 stars out of 4 and saying, "Reynolds and Jackson make this summer lunacy go down easy with their banter and bullet-dodging skills. They're the only reason that "The Hitman's Bodyguard" doesn't completely sink into the generic quicksand from whence it came."


title: The Hitman's Bodyguard

text: In May 2018, it was announced that Reynolds, Jackson and Hayek were in early talks to reprise their roles for a sequel, titled "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard", with plans to begin filming later in the year. Production on the sequel began in March 2019, with Frank Grillo, Antonio Banderas, and Morgan Freeman joining the cast of the film.


title: At sign

text: The at sign, , is normally read aloud as "at"; it is also commonly called the at symbol, commercial at, or address sign. It is used as an accounting and invoice abbreviation meaning "at a rate of" (e.g. 7 widgets @ £2 per widget = £14), but it is now seen more widely in email addresses and social media platform handles.


title: At sign

text: The absence of a single English word for the symbol has prompted some writers to use the French "arobase" or Spanish and Portuguese "arroba", or to coin new words such as "ampersat" and "asperand", or the (visual) onomatopoeia "strudel", but none of these have achieved wide use.


title: At sign

text: Although not included on the keyboard of the earliest commercially successful typewriters, it was on at least one 1889 model and the very successful Underwood models from the "Underwood No. 5" in 1900 onward. It started to be used in email addresses in the 1970s, and is now routinely included on most types of computer keyboards.


title: At sign

text: The earliest yet discovered symbol in this shape is found in a Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle written by Constantinos Manasses in 1345. Held today in the Vatican Apostolic Library, it features the @ symbol in place of the capital letter alpha "Α" as an initial in the word Amen; however, the reason behind it being used in this context is still unknown. The evolution of the symbol as used today is not recorded.


title: At sign

text: It has long been used in Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese as an abbreviation of "arroba", a unit of weight equivalent to 25 pounds, and derived from the Arabic expression of "the quarter" ( pronounced "ar-rubʿ"). A symbol resembling an @ is found in the Spanish "Taula de Ariza", a registry to denote a wheat shipment from Castile to Aragon, in 1448. An Italian academic, Giorgio Stabile, claims to have traced the @ symbol to the 16th century, in a mercantile document sent by Florentine Francesco Lapi from Seville to Rome on May 4, 1536. The document is about commerce with Pizarro, in particular the price of an @ of wine in Peru. Currently, the word "arroba" means both the at-symbol and a unit of weight. In Venetian, the symbol was interpreted to mean amphora (), a unit of weight and volume based upon the capacity of the standard amphora jar since the 6th century.


title: At sign

text: In contemporary English usage, @ is a commercial symbol, meaning "at" and "at the rate of" or "at the price of". It has rarely been used in financial ledgers, and is not used in standard typography.


title: At sign

text: In 2012, "@" was registered as a trademark with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office. A cancellation request was filed in 2013, and the cancellation was ultimately confirmed by the German Federal Patent Court in 2017.


title: At sign

text: A common contemporary use of @ is in email addresses (using the SMTP system), as in codice_1 (the user codice_2 located "at" the domain codice_3). Ray Tomlinson of BBN Technologies is credited for having introduced this usage in 1971. This idea of the symbol representing "located at" in the form codice_4 is also seen in other tools and protocols; for example, the Unix shell command codice_5 tries to establish an ssh connection to the computer with the hostname codice_6 using the username codice_2.


title: At sign

text: On web pages, organizations often obscure the email addresses of their members or employees by omitting the @. This practice, known as address munging, makes the email addresses less vulnerable to spam programs that scan the internet for them.


title: At sign

text: On some social media platforms and forums, usernames may be prefixed with an @ (in the form codice_8); this type of username is frequently referred to as a "handle".


title: At sign

text: On online forums without threaded discussions, @ is commonly used to denote a reply; for instance: codice_9 to respond to a comment Jane made earlier. Similarly, in some cases, @ is used for "attention" in email messages originally sent to someone else. For example, if an email was sent from Catherine to Steve, but in the body of the email, Catherine wants to make Keirsten aware of something, Catherine will start the line to indicate to Keirsten that the following sentence concerns her. This also helps with mobile email users who might not see bold or color in email.


title: At sign

text: In microblogging (such as on Twitter and GNU social-based microblogs), an @ before the user name is used to send publicly readable replies (e.g. codice_10). The blog and client software can automatically interpret these as links to the user in question. When included as part of a person's or company's contact details, an @ symbol followed by a name is normally understood to refer to a Twitter handle. A similar use of the @ symbol was also made available to Facebook users on September 15, 2009. In Internet Relay Chat (IRC), it is shown before users' nicknames to denote they have operator status on a channel.


title: At sign

text: In American English the @ can be used to add information about a sporting event. Where opposing sports teams have their names separated by a "v" (for versus), the away team can be written first – and the normal "v" replaced with @ to convey at which team's home field the game will be played. This usage is not followed in British English, since conventionally the home team is written first.


title: At sign

text: @ is used in various programming languages and other computer languages, although there is not a consistent theme to its usage. For example:


title: At sign

text: In Spanish, where many words end in "-o" when in the masculine gender and end "-a" in the feminine, @ is sometimes used as a gender-neutral substitute for the default "o" ending. For example, the word "amigos" traditionally represents not only male friends, but also a mixed group, or where the genders are not known. The proponents of gender-inclusive language would replace it with "amig@s" in these latter two cases, and use "amigos" only when the group referred to is all-male and "amigas" only when the group is all female. The Real Academia Española disapproves of this usage.


title: At sign

text: In many languages other than English, although most typewriters included the symbol, the use of @ was less common before email became widespread in the mid-1990s. Consequently, it is often perceived in those languages as denoting "the Internet", computerization, or modernization in general. Naming the symbol after animals is also common.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation. During World War II, it was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State, Communist Poland, and Nazi Germany. It was established by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The insurgent army arose out of separate militant formations of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Bandera faction (the OUN-B), other militant national-patriotic formations, some former defectors of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, mobilization of local populations and others. The political leadership of the army belonged to the OUN-B. It was the primary perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Its official date of creation is 14 October 1942, the day of the Intercession of the Theotokos feast. From December 1941 to July 1943, the Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army shared the same name (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA).


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Violence was accepted by OUN as a political tool against both foreign and domestic enemies of their cause, which would be achieved by a national revolution led by a dictatorship that would drive out occupying powers and set up a government representing all regions and social groups. The organization began as a resistance group and developed into a guerrilla army. In 1943, the UPA was controlled by the OUN(B) and included people of various political and ideological convictions. Furthermore, it needed the support of the broad masses against both the Germans and the Soviets. Much of the nationalist ideology, including the concept of dictatorship, did not appeal to former Soviet citizens who had experienced the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Hence, a revision of the OUN(B) ideology and political program was imperative. At its Third Extraordinary Grand Assembly on 21–25 August 1943, the OUN(B) condemned "internationalist and fascist national-socialist programs and political concepts" as well as "Russian-Bolshevik communism", and proposed a "system of free peoples and independent states [as] the single best solution to the problem of world order." Its social program did not differ essentially from earlier ones but emphasized a wide range of social services, worker participation in management, a mixed economy, choice of profession and workplace, and free trade unions. The OUN(B) affirmed that it was fighting for freedom of the press, speech, and thought.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: During its existence, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought against the Poles and the Soviets as their primary opponents, although the organization also fought against the Germans starting from February 1943, with many cases of collaboration with the German forces in the fight against the Soviets. From late spring 1944, the UPA and Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B (OUN-B)—faced with Soviet advances—also cooperated with German forces against the Soviets and Poles in the hope of creating an independent Ukrainian state. The OUN also played a substantial role in the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population of Volhynia and East Galicia, and later prevented the deportation of the Ukrainians in southeastern Poland.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: After the end of World War II, Soviet NKVD units fought against the UPA. The UPA remained active and fought against the People's Republic of Poland until 1947, and against the Soviet Union until 1949. It was particularly strong in the Carpathian Mountains, the entirety of Galicia and in Volhynia—in modern Western Ukraine. By the late 1940s, the mortality rate for Soviet troops fighting Ukrainian insurgents in Western Ukraine was higher than the mortality rate for Soviet troops during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Between February 1943 and May 1945, unlike most resistance movements, it had no significant foreign support. Its growth and strength were a reflection of the popularity it enjoyed among the people of Western Ukraine. Outside of western Ukraine, support was not significant, and the majority of the Soviet eastern Ukrainian population considered, and at times still viewed, the OUN/UPA to have been primarily collaborators with the Germans.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The UPA's command structure overlapped with that of the underground nationalist political party, the OUN, in a sophisticated centralized network. The UPA was responsible for military operations while the OUN was in charge of administrative duties; each had its own chain of command. The six main departments were military, political, security service, mobilization, supply, and the Ukrainian Red Cross. Despite the division between the UPA and the OUN, there was overlap between their posts and the local OUN and UPA leaders were frequently the same person. Organizational methods were borrowed and adapted from the German, Polish and Soviet military, while UPA units based their training on a modified Red Army field unit manual.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The General Staff, formed at the end of 1943 consisted of operations, intelligence, training, logistics, personnel and political education departments. UPA's largest units, "Kurins", consisting of 500-700 soldiers, were equivalent to battalions in a regular army, and its smallest units, "Riys" (literally bee swarm), with eight to ten soldiers, were equivalent to squads. Occasionally, and particularly in Volyn, during some operations three or more "Kurins" would unite and form a "Zahin" or Brigade.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: UPA's leaders were: Vasyl Ivakhiv (Spring – 13 of May 1943), Dmytro Klyachkivsky, Roman Shukhevych (January 1944 until 1950) and finally Vasyl Kuk.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In November 1943, the UPA adopted a new structure, creating a Main Military Headquarters and three areas (group) commands: UPA-West, UPA-North and UPA-South. Three military schools for low-level command staff were also established.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In terms of UPA soldiers' social background, 60 percent were peasants of low to moderate means, 20 to 25 percent were from the working class (primarily from the rural lumber and food industries), and 15 percent were members of the intelligentsia (students, urban professionals). The latter group provided a large portion of the UPA's military trainers and officer corps. With respect to the origins of UPA's members, 60 percent were from Galicia and 30 percent from Volhynia and Polesia.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The number of UPA fighters varied. A German Abwehr report from November 1943 estimated that the UPA had 20,000 soldiers; other estimates at that time placed the number at 40,000. By the summer of 1944, estimates of UPA membership varied from 25,000 to 30,000 fighters up to 100,000 or even 200,000 soldiers.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The greeting ""Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!"" () appeared in the 1930s among members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who started using this slogan as a greeting to its members.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The anthem of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was called the "March of Ukrainian Nationalists", also known as "We were born in a great hour" (). The song, written by Oles Babiy, was officially adopted by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1932.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The organization was a successor of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, whose anthem was "Chervona Kalyna". Leaders of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen Yevhen Konovalets and Andriy Melnyk were founding members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. For this reason, "Chervona Kalyna" was also used by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The battle flag of the UPA was a red-and-black banner. The flag continues to be a symbol of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. The colours of the flag symbolize 'red Ukrainian blood spilled on the black Ukrainian earth. Use of the flag is also a "sign of the stubborn endurance of the Ukrainian national idea even under the grimmest conditions."


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The UPA made use of a dual rank system that included functional command position designations and traditional military ranks. The functional system was developed due to an acute shortage of qualified and politically reliable officers during the early stages of organization.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: UPA rank structure consisted of at least seven commissioned officer ranks, four non-commissioned officer ranks, and two soldier ranks. The hierarchical order of known ranks and their approximate U.S. Army equivalent is as follows:


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The rank scheme provided for three more higher general officer ranks: Heneral-Poruchnyk (Major General), Heneral-Polkovnyk (Lieutenant General), and Heneral-Pikhoty (General with Four Stars).


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Initially, the UPA used the weapons collected from the battlefields of 1939 and 1941. Later they bought weapons from peasants and individual soldiers or captured them in combat. Some light weapons were also brought by deserting Ukrainian auxiliary policemen. For the most part, the UPA used light infantry weapons of Soviet and, to a lesser extent, German origin (for which ammunition was less readily obtainable). In 1944, German units armed the UPA directly with captured Soviet arms. Many kurins were equipped with light 51 mm and 82 mm mortars. During large-scale operations in 1943–1944, insurgent forces also used artillery (45 mm and 76.2 mm). In 1943 a light Hungarian tank was used in Volhynia.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In 1944, the Soviets captured a Polikarpov Po-2 aircraft and one armored car and one personnel carrier from UPA; however, it was not stated that they were in operable condition, while no OUN/UPA documents noted the usage of such equipment. By end of World War II in Europe, the NKVD had captured 45 artillery pieces (45 and 76.2 mm calibres) and 423 mortars from the UPA. In the attacks against Polish civilians, axes and pikes were used. However, the light infantry weapon was the basic weapon used by the UPA.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In a memorandum from 14 August 1941, the OUN (B) proposed to the Germans, to create a Ukrainian Army "which will join the German Army ... until the latter will win" (preferable translation: "which will unite with the German Army ... until [our] final victory"), in exchange for German recognition of an allied Ukrainian independent state.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: At the beginning of October 1941, during the first OUN Conference, the OUN formulated its future strategy. This called for transferring part of its organizational structure underground, in order to avoid conflict with the Germans. It also refrained from open anti-German propaganda activities.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: A captured German document of 25 November 1941 (Nuremberg Trial O14-USSR) ordered: "It has been ascertained that the Bandera Movement is preparing a revolt in the Reichskommissariat which has as its ultimate aim the establishment of an independent Ukraine. All functionaries of the Bandera Movement must be arrested at once and, after thorough interrogation, are to be liquidated..."


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: At the Second Conference of the OUN(B), held in April 1942, the policies for the "creation, build-up and development of Ukrainian political and future military forces" and "action against partisan activity supported by Moscow" were adopted. Although German policies were criticized, the Soviet partisans were identified as the primary enemy of OUN (B).


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The "Military conference of OUN (B)" met in December 1942 near Lviv. The conference resulted in the adoption of a policy for accelerated growth for the establishment of OUN(B)'s military forces. The conference emphasized that "all combat capable population must support, under OUN banners, the struggle against the Bolshevik enemy". On 30 May 1947, the Main Ukrainian Liberation Council (Головна Визвольна Рада) adopted the date of 14 October 1942 as the date of the formation of the UIA, and thus marked as its official anniversary.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Despite the stated opinions of Dmytro Klyachkivsky and Roman Shukhevych that the Germans were a secondary threat compared to their main enemies (the communist forces of the Soviet Union and Poland), the Third Conference of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, held near Lviv from 17 to 21 February 1943, decided to begin open warfare against the Germans (OUN fighters had already attacked a German garrison earlier that year on 7 February). Accordingly, on 20 March 1943, the OUN(B) leadership issued secret instructions ordering their members who had joined the collaborationist Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in 1941–1942 to desert with their weapons and join with UPA units in Volhynia. This process often involved armed conflict with German forces trying to prevent this. The number of trained and armed personnel who joined the ranks of the UPA was estimated to be between 4 and 5 thousand.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Anti-German actions were limited to situations where the Germans attacked the Ukrainian population or UPA units. Indeed, according to German general Ernst August Köstring, UPA fighters "fought almost exclusively against German administrative agencies, the German police and the SS in their quest to establish an independent Ukraine controlled by neither Moscow nor Germany."


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: During the German occupation, the UPA conducted hundreds of raids on police stations and military convoys. In the region of Zhytomyr insurgents were estimated by the German General-Kommissar Leyser to be in control of 80% of the forests and 60% of the farmland.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: According to the OUN/UPA, on 12 May 1943, Germans attacked the town of Kolki using several SS-Divisions (SS units operated alongside the German Army who were responsible for intelligence, central security, policing action, and mass extermination), where both sides suffered heavy losses. Soviet partisans reported the reinforcement of German auxiliary forces at Kolki from the end of April until the middle of May 1943.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In June 1943, German SS and police forces under the command of Erich von dem Bach, the head of Himmler-directed Bandenbekämpfung ("bandit warfare"), attempted to destroy UPA-North in Volhynia during Operation BB (Bandenbekämpfung). According to Ukrainian claims, the initial stage of the operation produced no results whatsoever. This development was the subject of several discussions by Himmler's staff that resulted in General von dem Bach-Zelewski being sent to Ukraine. He failed to eliminate the UPA, which grew steadily, and the Germans, apart from terrorizing the civilian population, were virtually limited to defensive actions.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: From July through September 1943, in an estimated 74 clashes between German forces and the UPA, the Germans lost more than 3,000 men killed or wounded, while the UPA lost 1,237 killed or wounded. According to post-war estimates, the UPA had the following number of clashes with the Germans in mid-to-late 1943 in Volhynia: 35 in July, 24 in August, 15 in September and 47 during October–November. In the fall of 1943, clashes between the UPA and the Germans declined, so that Erich Koch in his November 1943 report and New Year 1944 speech could claim that "nationalistic bands in forests do not pose any major threat" for the Germans.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In the Autumn of 1943, some detachments of the UPA attempted to find rapprochement with the Germans. Although doing so was condemned by an OUN/UPA order on 25 November 1943, these actions did not end. In early 1944, UPA forces in several Western regions cooperated with the German Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, SiPo and SD. However, in the winter and spring of 1944 it would be incorrect to say that there was a complete cessation of armed conflict between UPA and German forces, as the UPA continued to defend Ukrainian villages against the repressive actions of the German administration.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: For example, on 20 January, 200 German soldiers on their way to the Ukrainian village of Pyrohivka were forced to retreat after a several-hour long firefight with 80 UPA soldiers after having lost 30 killed and wounded. In March–July 1944, a senior leader of OUN(B) in Galicia conducted negotiations with SD and SS officials, resulting in a German decision to supply the UPA with arms and ammunition. In May of that year, the OUN issued instructions to "switch the struggle, which had been conducted against the Germans, completely into a struggle against the Soviets."


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In a top-secret memorandum, General-Major Brigadeführer Brenner wrote in mid-1944 to SS-Obergruppenführer General Hans-Adolf Prützmann, the highest ranking German SS officer in Ukraine, that "The UPA has halted all attacks on units of the German army. The UPA systematically sends agents, mainly young women, into the enemy-occupied territory, and the results of the intelligence are communicated to Department 1c of the [German] Army Group" on the southern front. By the autumn of 1944, the German press was full of praise for the UPA for their anti-Bolshevik successes, referring to the UPA fighters as "Ukrainian fighters for freedom" After the front had passed, by the end of 1944 the Germans supplied the OUN/UPA by air with arms and equipment. In the region of Ivano-Frankivsk, there even existed a small landing strip for German transport planes. Some German personnel trained in terrorist and intelligence activities behind Soviet lines, as well as some OUN-B leaders, were also transported through this channel.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Adopting a strategy analogous to that of the Chetnik leader General Draža Mihailović, the UPA limited its actions against the Germans in order to better prepare itself for and engage in the struggle against the communists. Because of this, although the UPA managed to limit German activities to a certain extent, it failed to prevent the Germans from deporting approximately 500,000 people from Western Ukraine and from economically exploiting Western Ukraine. Due to its focus on the Soviets as the principal threat, UPA's anti-German struggle did not contribute significantly to the liberation of Ukrainian territories by Soviet forces.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In 1943, the UPA adopted a policy of massacring and expelling the Polish population. The decision of ethnic cleansing of the area east of the Bug River was taken by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army early in 1943. In March 1943, the OUN(B) (specifically Mykola Lebed) imposed a collective death sentence on all Poles living in the former east of the Second Polish Republic, and a few months later, local units of the UPA were instructed to complete the operation soon. Among those who were behind the decision, Polish investigators singled out Dmytro Klyachkivsky, Vasyl Ivakhov, Ivan Lytvynchuk and Petro Oliynyk.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The ethnic cleansing operation against the Poles began on a large scale in Volhynia in late February (or early Spring) of that year and lasted until the end of 1944. Taras Bulba-Borovets, the founder of the UPA, criticized the attacks as soon as they began:


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: 11 July 1943 was one of the deadliest days of the massacres, with UPA units marching from village to village, killing Polish civilians. On that day, UPA units surrounded and attacked 99 Polish villages and settlements in three counties – Kowel, Horochów, and Włodzimierz Wołyński. On the following day, 50 additional villages were attacked. In January 1944, the UPA campaign of ethnic cleansing spread to the neighbouring province of Galicia. Unlike in Volhynia, where Polish villages were destroyed and their inhabitants murdered without warning, Poles in eastern Galicia were in some instances given the choice of fleeing or being killed. Ukrainian peasants sometimes joined the UPA in the violence, and large bands of armed marauders, unaffiliated with the UPA, brutalized civilians. In other cases however, Ukrainian civilians took significant steps to protect their Polish neighbours, either by hiding them during the UPA raids or vouching that the Poles were actually Ukrainians.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The methods used by UPA to carry out the massacres were particularly brutal and were committed indiscriminately without any restraint. Historian Norman Davies describes the killings: "Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away." In total, the estimated numbers of Polish and Jewish civilians killed in Volhynia and Galicia is between 50,000 and 100,000.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Victims of the UPA included Ukrainians who did not adhere to its form of nationalism and so were considered traitors.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: After the initiation of the massacres, Polish self-defense units responded in kind. Estimates of Ukrainians killed in acts of reprisal range from 2,000 to 30,000.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: On 22 July 2016, the Sejm of the Republic of Poland passed a resolution declaring the massacres committed by UPA a genocide.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: After Galicia had been taken over by the Red Army, many units of UPA abandoned the anti-Polish course of action and some even began cooperating with local Polish anti-communist resistance against the Soviets and the NKVD. Many Ukrainians, who had nothing to do with earlier massacres against the Poles, seeking to defend themselves against communists, joined UPA after the war on both the Soviet and Polish sides of the border. Local agreements between the UPA and the Polish post-AK units began to appear as early as April/May 1945 and in some places lasted until 1947, such as in the Lublin region. One of the most notable joint actions of UPA and the post-AK Freedom and Independence (WiN) organization took place in May 1946, when the two partisan formations coordinated their attack and took over of the city of Hrubieszów.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The cooperation between UPA and the post-AK underground came about partly as a response to increasing communist terror and the deportations of Ukrainians to the Soviet Union, and Poles into the new socialist Poland. According to official statistics, between 1944 and 1956 around 488,000 Ukrainians and 789,000 Poles were transferred. On the territories of present-day Poland, 8–12 thousand Ukrainians were killed and 6–8 thousand Poles, between 1943 and 1947. However, unlike in Volhynia, most of the casualties occurred after 1944 and involved UPA soldiers and Ukrainian civilians on one side, and members of the Polish communist security services (UB) and border forces (WOP). Out of the 2,200 Poles who died in the fighting between 1945 and 1948, only a few hundred were civilians, with the remainder being functionaries or soldiers of the Communist regime in Poland.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The total number of local Soviet Partisans acting in Western Ukraine was never high, due to the region enduring only two years of German rule (in some places even less).


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In 1943, the Soviet partisan leader Sydir Kovpak was sent to the Carpathian Mountains, with help from Nikita Khrushchev. He described his mission to western Ukraine in his book "Vid Putivlia do Karpat" (From Putivl to the Carpathian Mountains). Well armed by supplies delivered to secret airfields, he formed a group consisting of several thousand men which moved deep into the Carpathians. Attacks by the German air force and military forced Kovpak to break up his force into smaller units in 1944; these groups were attacked by UPA units on their way back. Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov was captured and executed by UPA members after unwittingly entering their camp while wearing a Wehrmacht officer uniform.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: As the Red Army approached Galicia, the UPA avoided clashes with the regular units of the Soviet military. Instead, the UPA focused its energy on NKVD units and Soviet officials of all levels, from NKVD and military officers to the school teachers and postal workers attempting to establish Soviet administration.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In March 1944, UPA insurgents mortally wounded front commander Army General Nikolai Vatutin, who liberated Kyiv when he led Soviet forces in the Second battle of Kiev . Several weeks later an NKVD battalion was annihilated by the UPA near Rivne. This resulted in a full-scale operation in the spring of 1944, initially involving 30,000 Soviet troops against the UPA in Volhynia. Estimates of casualties vary depending on the source. In a letter to the state defence committee of the USSR, Lavrentiy Beria stated that in spring 1944 clashes between Soviet forces and UPA resulted in 2,018 killed and 1,570 captured UPA fighters and only 11 Soviets killed and 46 wounded. Soviet archives show that a captured UPA member stated that he received reports about UPA losses of 200 fighters while the Soviet forces lost 2,000. The first significant sabotage operations against communications of the Soviet Army before their offensive against the Germans was conducted by the UPA in April–May 1944. Such actions were promptly stopped by the Soviet Army and NKVD troops, after which the OUN/UPA submitted an order to temporarily cease anti-Soviet activities and prepare for the further struggle against the Soviets.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Despite heavy casualties on both sides during the initial clashes, the struggle was inconclusive. New large-scale actions of the UPA, especially in Ternopil Oblast, were launched in July–August 1944, when the Red Army advanced West. By the autumn of 1944, UPA forces enjoyed virtual freedom of movement over an area of 160,000 square kilometers in size and home to over 10 million people and had established a shadow government.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In November 1944, Khrushchev launched the first of several large-scale Soviet assaults on the UPA throughout Western Ukraine, involving according to OUN/UPA estimates at least 20 NKVD combat divisions supported by artillery and armoured units. They blockaded villages and roads and set forests on fire. Soviet archival data states that on 9 October 1944, one NKVD Division, eight NKVD brigades, and an NKVD cavalry regiment with a total of 26,304 NKVD soldiers were stationed in Western Ukraine. In addition, two regiments with 1,500 and 1,200 persons, one battalion (517 persons) and three armoured trains with 100 additional soldiers each, as well as one border guard regiment and one unit were starting to relocate there in order to reinforce them.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: During late 1944 and the first half of 1945, according to Soviet data, the UPA suffered approximately 89,000 killed, approximately 91,000 captured, and approximately 39,000 surrendered while the Soviet forces lost approximately 12,000 killed, approximately 6,000 wounded and 2,600 MIA. In addition, during this time, according to Soviet data UPA actions resulted in the killing of 3,919 civilians and the disappearance of 427 others. Despite the heavy losses, as late as summer 1945, many battalion-size UPA units still continued to control and administer large areas of territory in Western Ukraine. In February 1945 the UPA issued an order to liquidate kurins (battalions) and sotnya's (companies) and to act predominantly by chotys (platoons).


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: After Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Soviet authorities turned their attention to insurgencies taking place in Ukraine and the Baltics. Combat units were reorganised and special forces were sent in. One of the major complications that arose was the local support the UPA had from the population.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Areas of UPA activity were depopulated. The estimates on numbers deported vary; officially Soviet archives state that between 1944 and 1952 a total of 182,543 people were deported while other sources indicate the number may have been as high as to 500,000.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Mass arrests of suspected UPA informants or family members were conducted; between February 1944 and May 1946 over 250,000 people were arrested in Western Ukraine. Those arrested typically experienced beatings or other violence. Those suspected of being UPA members underwent torture; reports exist of some prisoners being burned alive. The many arrested women believed to be affiliating with the UPA were subjected to torture, deprivation, and rape at the hands of Soviet security in order to "break" them and get them to reveal UPA members' identities and locations or to turn them into Soviet double-agents. Mutilated corpses of captured rebels were put on public display. Ultimately, between 1944 and 1952 alone as many as 600,000 people may have been arrested in Western Ukraine, with about one-third executed and the rest imprisoned or exiled.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The UPA responded to the Soviet methods by unleashing their own terror against Soviet activists, suspected collaborators and their families. This work was particularly attributed to the Sluzhba Bezbeky (SB), the anti-espionage wing of the UPA. In a typical incident in the Lviv region, in front of horrified villagers, UPA troops gouged out the eyes of two entire families suspected of reporting on insurgent movements to Soviet authorities, before hacking their bodies to pieces. Due to public outrage concerning these violent punitive acts, the UPA stopped the practice of killing the families of collaborators by mid-1945. Other victims of the UPA included Soviet activists sent to Galicia from other parts of the Soviet Union; heads of village Soviets, those sheltering or feeding Red Army personnel, and even people turning food into collective farms. The effect of such terrorist acts was such that people refused to take posts as village heads, and until the late 1940s villages chose single men with no dependants as their leaders.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The UPA also proved to be especially adept at assassinating key Soviet administrative officials. According to NKVD data, between February 1944 and December 1946 11,725 Soviet officers, agents and collaborators were assassinated and 2,401 were "missing", presumed kidnapped, in Western Ukraine. In one county in Lviv region alone, from August 1944 until January 1945 Ukrainian rebels killed 10 members of the Soviet active and a secretary of the county Communist party, and also kidnapped four other officials. The UPA travelled at will throughout the area. In this county, there were no courts, no prosecutor's office, and the local NKVD only had three staff members.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: According to a 1946 report by Khrushchev's deputy for West Ukrainian affairs A.A. Stoiantsev, out of 42,175 operations and ambushes against the UPA by Destruction battalions in Western Ukraine, only 10 percent had positive results – in the vast majority there was either no contact or the individual unit was disarmed and pro-Soviet leaders murdered or kidnapped. Morale amongst the NKVD in Western Ukraine was particularly low. Even within the dangerous context of Soviet state service in the late-Stalin era, West Ukraine was considered to be a "hardship post", and personnel files reveal higher rates of transfer requests, alcoholism, nervous breakdowns, and refusal to serve among NKVD field agents there at that time.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The first success of the Soviet authorities came in early 1946 in the Carpathians, which were blockaded from 11 January until 10 April. The UPA operating there ceased to exist as a combat unit. The continuous heavy casualties elsewhere forced the UPA to split into small units consisting of 100 soldiers. Many of the troops demobilized and returned home, when the Soviet Union offered three amnesties during 1947–1948.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: By 1946, the UPA was reduced to a core group of 5–10 thousand fighters, and large-scale UPA activity shifted to the Soviet-Polish border. Here, in 1947, they killed the Polish Communist deputy defence minister General Karol Świerczewski. In spring 1946, the OUN/UPA established contacts with the Intelligence services of France, Great Britain and the USA.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The turning point in the struggle against the UPA came in 1947 when the Soviets established an intelligence gathering network within the UPA and shifted the focus of their actions from mass terror to infiltration and espionage. After 1947 the UPA's activity began to subside. On May 30, 1947, Shukhevych issued instructions for joining the OUN and UPA in underground warfare. In 1947–1948 UPA resistance was weakened enough to allow the Soviets to begin implementation of large-scale collectivization throughout Western Ukraine.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In 1948, the Soviet central authorities purged local officials who had mistreated peasants and engaged in "vicious methods". At the same time, Soviet agents planted within the UPA had taken their toll on morale and on the UPA's effectiveness. According to the writing of one slain Ukrainian rebel, "the Bolsheviks tried to take us from within...you can never know exactly in whose hands you will find yourself. From such a network of spies, the work of whole teams is often penetrated...". In November 1948, the work of Soviet agents led to two important victories against the UPA: the defeat and deaths of the heads of the most active UPA network in Western Ukraine, and the removal of "Myron", the head of the UPA's counter-intelligence SB unit.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The Soviet authorities tried to win over the local population by making a significant economic investments in Western Ukraine, and by setting up rapid reaction groups in many regions to combat the UPA. According to one retired MVD major, "By 1948 ideologically we had the support of most of the population."


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The UPA's leader, Roman Shukhevych, was killed during an ambush near Lviv on 5 March 1950. Although sporadic UPA activity continued until the mid-1950s, after Shukhevich's death the UPA rapidly lost its fighting capability. An assessment of UPA manpower by Soviet authorities on 17 April 1952 claimed that UPA/OUN had only 84 fighting units consisting of 252 persons. The UPA's last commander, Vasyl Kuk, was captured on 24 May 1954. Despite the existence of some insurgent groups, according to a report by the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR, the "liquidation of armed units and OUN underground was accomplished by the beginning of 1956".


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: NKVD units dressed as UPA fighters are known to have committed atrocities against the civilian population in order to discredit the UPA. Among these NKVD units were those composed of former UPA fighters working for the NKVD. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) recently published information that about 150 such special groups consisting of 1,800 people operated until 1954.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Prominent people killed by UPA insurgents during the anti-Soviet struggle included Metropolitan Oleksiy (Hromadsky) of the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church, killed while travelling in a German convoy, and pro-Soviet writer Yaroslav Halan.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In 1951 CIA covert operations chief Frank Wisner estimated that some 35,000 Soviet police troops and Communist party cadres had been eliminated by guerrillas affiliated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the period after the end of World War II. Official Soviet figures for the losses inflicted by all types of Ukrainian nationalists during the period 1944–1953 referred to 30,676 persons; amongst them were 687 NKGB-MGB personnel, 1,864 NKVD-MVD personnel, 3,199 Soviet Army, Border Guards, and NKVD-MVD troops, 241 communist party leaders, 205 komsomol leaders and 2,590 members of self-defence units. According to Soviet data, the remaining losses were among civilians, including 15,355 peasants and kolkhozniks. Soviet archives state that between February 1944 and January 1946 the Soviet forces conducted 39,778 operations against the UPA, during which they killed a total of 103,313, captured a total of 8,370 OUN members and captured a total of 15,959 active insurgents.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Many UPA members were imprisoned in the Gulag. They actively participated in Gulag uprisings (Kengir uprising, Norilsk uprising, Vorkuta uprising).


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In 1944–1945 the NKVD carried out 26,693 operations against the Ukrainian underground. These resulted in the deaths of 22,474 Ukrainian soldiers and the capture of 62,142 prisoners. During this time the NKVD formed special groups known as "spetshrupy" made up of former Soviet partisans. The goal of these groups was to discredit and disorganize the OUN and UPA. In August 1944, Sydir Kovpak was placed under NKVD authority. Posing as Ukrainian insurgents, these special formations used violence against the civilian population of Western Ukraine. In June 1945 there were 156 such special groups with 1783 members.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: From December 1945 to 1946, 15,562 operations were carried out in which 4,200 were killed and more than 9,400 were arrested. From 1944 to 1953, the Soviets killed 153,000 and arrested 134,000 members of the UPA. 66,000 families (204,000 people) were forcibly deported to Siberia, and half a million people were subject to repressions. In the same period, Polish communist authorities deported 450,000 people.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Soviet infiltration of British intelligence also meant that MI6 assisted in training some of the guerrillas in parachuting, and unmarked planes used to drop them into Ukraine from bases in Cyprus and Malta, were counter-acted by the fact that one MI6 agent with knowledge of the operation was the traitor Kim Philby. Working with Anthony Blunt, he alerted Soviet security forces about planned drops. Ukrainian guerrillas were intercepted and most were executed.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The OUN pursued a policy of infiltrating the German police to obtain weapons and training for fighters. In that role, it helped the Germans to carry out the Holocaust. The Ukrainian auxiliary police, working for the Germans, played a crucial supporting role in the murder of 200,000 Jews in Volhynia in the second half of 1942. Most of the police deserted in the following spring and joined UPA.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Numerous accounts ascribe to the UPA a role in the killing of Ukrainian Jews under the German occupation. According to Ray Brandon, co-editor of "The Shoah in Ukraine", "Jews in hiding in Volhynia saw the UPA as a threat."


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: With the first antisemitic ideology and acts traced back to the Russian Civil War, by 1940–41 the publications of Ukrainian terrorist organizations became explicitly antisemitic. German documents of the period give the impression that Ukrainian ultranationalists were indifferent to the plight of the Jews and would either kill them or help them, whichever was more appropriate for their political goals.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: According to John Paul Himka, OUN militias were responsible for a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Lviv in 1941, in what it was at the time occupied Poland, and other areas that claimed thousands of lives. The OUN had repudiated pogroms but changed its stand when the Germans, with whom the OUN sought an alliance, demanded participation in them. According to Unian.net, recently declassified documents have shown that the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) was most likely not strongly involved in anti-Jewish activities in 1941.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Jews played an important role in the Soviet partisan movement in Volhynia and participated in its actions. According to Timothy D. Snyder, the Soviet partisans were known for their brutality by retaliating against entire villages suspected of working with the Germans, killing individuals deemed to be collaborators, and provoking the Germans to attack villages. UPA would later attempt to match that brutality. By early 1943, the OUN had entered into open armed conflict with Nazi Germany. According to Ukrainian historian and former UPA soldier Lew Shankowsky, immediately upon assuming the position of commander of the UPA in August 1943, Roman Shukhevych issued an order banning participation in anti-Jewish activities. No written record of this order, however, has been found. In 1944, the OUN formally "rejected racial and ethnic exclusivity". Nevertheless, Jews hiding from the Germans with Poles in Polish villages were often killed by UPA along with their Polish saviors, although in at least one case, they were spared as the Poles were murdered.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Despite the earlier anti-Jewish statements by the OUN and its involvement in the killing of some Jews, there were cases of Jewish participation within the ranks of the UPA, some of whom held high positions. According to journalist and former fighter Leo Heiman, some Jews fought for the UPA, and others included medical personal. These included Dr. Margosh, who headed UPA-West's medical service, Dr. Marksymovich, who was the Chief Physician of the UPA's officer school, and Dr. Abraham Kum, the director of an underground hospital in the Carpathians. The latter individual was the recipient of the UPA's Golden Cross of Merit. Some Jews who fled the ghettos for the forests were killed by members of the UPA.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: According to Filip Friedman, many Jews, particularly those whose skills were useful to UPA, were sheltered by them. It has been claimed that the UPA sometimes executed its Jewish personnel, but Friedman evaluated such claims as either uncorroborated or mistaken. However, it has been said by the historian Daniel Romanovsky that in late 1943, the commander of the UPA, Shukhevych, announced a verbal order to destroy the Poles, Jews and Gypsies with the exception to medical personnel, and later fighters executed personnel at the approach of the Soviet Army.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: According to Herbert Romerstein, Soviet propaganda complained about Zionist membership in the UPA, and during the persecution of Jews in the early 1950s, they described the alleged connection between Jewish and Ukrainian nationalists.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: One well-known claimed example of Jewish participation in the UPA was most likely a hoax, according to sources such as Friedman. According to the report, Stella Krenzbach, the daughter of a rabbi and a Zionist, joined the UPA as a nurse and intelligence agent. She is alleged to have written, "I attribute the fact that I am alive today and devoting all the strength of my thirty-eight years to a free Israel only to God and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. I became a member of the heroic UPA on 7 November 1943. In our group I counted twelve Jews, eight of whom were doctors". Later, Friedman concluded that Krenzbach was a fictional character, as the only evidence for her existence was in an OUN paper. No one knew of such an employee at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she supposedly worked after the war. A Jew, Leiba Dubrovskii, pretended to be Ukrainian.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: During the following years, the UPA was officially taboo in the Soviet Union, mentioned only as a terrorist organization. Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, there have been heated debates about the possible award of official recognition to former UPA members as legitimate combatants, with the accompanying pensions and benefits due to war veterans. UPA veterans have also striven to hold parades and commemorations of their own, especially in Western Ukraine. This, in turn, led to opposition from Soviet Army veterans and some Ukrainian politicians, particularly from the south and east of the country.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Recently, attempts to reconcile former Armia Krajowa and UPA soldiers have been made by both the Ukrainian and Polish sides. Individual former UPA members have expressed their readiness for a mutual apology. Some of the past soldiers of both organisations have met and asked for forgiveness for their past misdeeds. Restorations of graves and cemeteries in Poland where fallen UPA soldiers were buried have been agreed to by the Polish side.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In late March 2019 former members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (and other living former members of Ukrainian irregular nationalist armed groups that were active during World War II and the first decade after the war) were officially granted the status of veterans. This meant that for the first time they could receive veteran benefits, including free public transport, subsidized medical services, annual monetary aid, and public utility discounts (and will enjoy the same social benefits as former Ukrainian soldiers who served in the Red Army of the Soviet Union).


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: There had been several previous attempts to provide former Ukrainian nationalist fighters with official veteran status, especially during the 2005–2009 administration of President Viktor Yushenko, but all failed.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Prior to December 2018 legally only former UPA members who "participated in hostilities against Nazi invaders in occupied Ukraine in 1941–1944, who did not commit crimes against humanity and were rehabilitated" were recognized as war veterans.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Without waiting for official notice from Kyiv, many regional authorities have already decided to approach the UPA's history on their own. In many western cities and villages monuments, memorials and plaques to the leaders and troops of the UPA have been erected, including a monument to Stepan Bandera himself which opened in October 2007. In eastern Ukraine's city of Kharkiv, a memorial to the soldiers of the UPA was erected in 1992. In late 2006, the Lviv city administration announced the future transference of the tombs of Stepan Bandera, Yevhen Konovalets, Andriy Melnyk and other key leaders of the OUN/UPA to a new area of Lychakiv Cemetery specifically dedicated to Ukrainian nationalists.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In response, many southern and eastern provinces, although the UPA had not operated in those regions, have responded by opening memorials of their own dedicated to the UPA's victims. The first one, "The Shot in the Back", was unveiled by the Communist Party of Ukraine in Simferopol, Crimea in September 2007. In 2008, one was erected in Svatove, Luhansk oblast, and another in Luhansk on 8 May 2010 by the city deputy, Arsen Klinchaev, and the Party of Regions. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Vice Prime Minister Viktor Tykhonov, the leader of the parliamentary faction of the Pro-Russian Party of Regions Oleksandr Yefremov, Russian State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin, Luhansk Regional Governor Valerii Holenko, and Luhansk Mayor Serhii Kravchenko.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Polish survivors from Wołyn and Galicia who lived through the massacres, constructed monuments and memorial tables in the places where they settled after the war, such as Warsaw, Wrocław, Sanok and Kłodzko.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: According to John Armstrong, "If one takes into account the duration, geographical extent, and intensity of activity, the UPA very probably is the most important example of forceful resistance to an established Communist regime prior to the decade of fierce Afghan resistance beginning in 1979... the Hungarian revolution of 1956 was, of course, far more important, involving to some degree a population of nine million... however it lasted only a few weeks. In contrast, the more-or-less effective anti-Communist activity of the Ukrainian resistance forces lasted from mid-1944 until 1950".


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: On 10 January 2008, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko submitted a draft law "on the official Status of Fighters for Ukraine's Independence from the 1920s to the 1990s". Under the draft, persons who took part in political, guerrilla, underground and combat activities for the freedom and independence of Ukraine from 1920 to 1990 as part of or assisting the following:


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In 2007, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) set up a special working group to study archive documents of the activity of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to make public original sources.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Since 2006, the SBU has been actively involved in declassifying documents relating to the operations of Soviet security services and the history of the liberation movement in Ukraine. The SBU Information Centre provides an opportunity for scholars to get acquainted with electronic copies of archive documents. The documents are arranged by topics (1932–1933 Holodomor, OUN/UPA Activities, Repression in Ukraine, Movement of Dissident).


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Since September 2009, Ukrainian schoolchildren take a more extensive course of the history of the Holodomor and the fighters of the OUN and the UPA fighters.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Yushchenko took part in the celebration of the 67th anniversary of the UPA and the 65th anniversary of Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council on 14 October 2009.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: To commemorate National Unity Day on 22 January 2010, Yushchenko awarded Bandera the Hero of Ukraine honor posthumously. A district administrative court in Donetsk cancelled the presidential decree granting the honor to Bandera on 2 April 2010. The lawyer Vladimir Olentsevych argued in a lawsuit that the honor is the highest state award that is granted exclusively to citizens of Ukraine. Bandera was not a Ukrainian citizen, as he was killed in exile in 1959 before the 1991 Declaration of Independence of Ukraine.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: On 16 January 2012, the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine upheld the presidential decree of 28 January 2010 "About recognition of OUN members and soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as participants in the struggle for independence of Ukraine" after it was challenged by the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Nataliya Vitrenko, recognising the UPA as war combatants.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: On 10 October 2014, the date of 14 October as Defenders of Ukraine Day was confirmed by Presidential decree, officially granting state sanction to the date of the anniversary of the raising of the Insurgent Army, which has been celebrated in the past by Ukrainian Cossacks as the Feast of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: On 15 May 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a bill into law that provides "public recognition to anyone who fought for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century", including Ukrainian Insurgent Army combatants.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Zhytomyr, the UPA flag may be displayed on government buildings "on certain holidays".


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In June 2017, the Kyiv City Council renamed the city's General Vatutin Avenue into Roman Shukhevych Avenue.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: In December 2018, Poroshenko confirmed the status of veterans and combatants for independence of Ukraine for UPA fighters.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: On 5 March 2021, the Ternopil City Council named the largest stadium in the city of Ternopil after Roman Shukhevych as the Roman Shukhevych Ternopil city stadium. On 16 March 2021, the Lviv Oblast Council approved the renaming of their largest stadium after Roman Shukhevych.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The Ukrainian black metal band Drudkh recorded a song entitled "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" on its 2006 release, "Кров у Наших Криницях" ("Blood in our wells"), dedicated to Stepan Bandera. Ukrainian Neo-Nazi black metal band Nokturnal Mortum have a song titled "Hailed Be the Heroes" ("Слава героям") on the Weltanschauung/"Мировоззрение" album which contains lyrics pertaining to World War II and Western Ukraine (Galicia), and its title, "Slava Heroyam", is a traditional UPA salute.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Two Czech films by František Vláčil, "Shadows of the Hot Summer" ("Stíny horkého léta", 1977) and "The Little Shepherd Boy from the Valley" ("Pasáček z doliny", 1983) are set in 1947, and feature UPA guerrillas in significant supporting roles. The first film resembles Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" (1971), in that it is about a farmer whose family is taken hostage by five UPA guerrillas, and he has to resort to his own ingenuity, plus reserves of violence that he never knew he possessed, to defeat them. In the second, the shepherd boy (actually a cowherd) imagines that a group of UPA guerrillas is made up of fairytale characters of his grandfather's stories, and that their leader is the Goblin King.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: Also films such as "Neskorenyi" ("The Undefeated"), "Zalizna Sotnia" ("The Company of Heroes") and "Atentat" ("Assassination. An Autumn Murder in Munich") feature more description about the role of UPA on their terrain. "The Undefeated" is about the life of Roman Shuhevych and the hunt for him by both German and Soviet forces, "The Company of Heroes" shows how UPA soldiers had everyday life as they fight against Armia Krajowa, "Assassination" is about the life of Stepan Bandera and how KGB agents murdered him.


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The red-and-black battle flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a popular symbol among Euromaidan protesters, and the wartime insurgents have acted as a large inspiration for them. Serhy Yekelchyk of the University of Victoria says the use of UPA imagery and slogans was more of a potent symbol of protest against the current government and Russia rather than adulation for the insurgents themselves, explaining "The reason for the sudden prominence of [UPA symbolism] in Kyiv is that it is the strongest possible expression of protest against the pro-Russian orientation of the current government."


title: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

text: The most obvious characteristic of the insurgent songs genre is the theme of rising up against occupying powers, enslavement and tyranny. Insurgent songs express an open call to battle and to revenge against the enemies of Ukraine, as well as love for the motherland and devotion to her revolutionary leaders (Bandera, Chuprynka and others). UPA actions, heroic deeds of individual soldiers, the hard underground life, longing for one's girl, family or boy are also important subject of this genre.


title: Xavi Simons

text: Xavi Quentin Shay Simons (born 21 April 2003) is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Eredivisie club PSV and the Netherlands national team.


title: Xavi Simons

text: Born in Amsterdam, Simons is the son of Dutch former footballer Regillio Simons. Simons is of Surinamese descent through his father. His older brother Faustino (born 1996), who also played football, shares the same birthday.


title: Xavi Simons

text: Simons joined the youth setup of Barcelona in 2010 from of Alicante, and quickly progressed to become one of the Spanish club's most highly rated youth players, with English club Chelsea, as well as Spanish giants Real Madrid, reportedly attempting to sign him at a young age.


title: Xavi Simons

text: In July 2019, Simons moved to French side Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), having failed to agree a new contract with Barcelona. His three-year contract with the Parisian club was reportedly worth up to €1 million annually. On 10 February 2021, Simons made his professional debut for PSG, coming on as a substitute for Julian Draxler in a 1–0 Coupe de France win over Caen. He made his Ligue 1 debut as a substitute in a 4–1 win over Strasbourg two months later. On 19 May 2021, he won his first professional trophy, the Coupe de France.


title: Xavi Simons

text: Ahead of the 2021–22 season, Simons was included in the first-team preparation and pre-season by manager Mauricio Pochettino. On 14 July 2021, he came off the bench and scored a goal in a 4–0 friendly win over Le Mans at the Camp des Loges. He scored another goal in a 2–2 friendly draw against Chambly three days later at the same ground. On 18 August, Simons was sent back to train with the under-19 squad coached by Zoumana Camara. He eventually made his first appearance of the season for PSG in a 3–0 cup win over Feignies Aulnoye on 19 December, his first ever professional start. On 3 January 2022, Simons recorded his first senior assist in a 4–0 cup win over Vannes, a pass for Kylian Mbappé. His first league appearance of the 2021–22 season came in a 1–1 away draw to Lyon on 9 January, where he came on as a 69th minute substitute. On 31 January, Simons missed the final penalty in a 6–5 penalty shoot-out defeat to Nice in the round of 16 of the Coupe de France. On 11 February, he made his first league start in a 1–0 win over Rennes at the Parc des Princes.


title: Xavi Simons

text: On 28 June 2022, Simons signed for Eredivisie club PSV on a five-year contract. Although he was initially expected to extend his contract with PSG and join PSV on loan, the situation changed when PSV no longer wanted a loan deal. However, PSG negotiated a buy-back clause in Simons's contract, effective in 2023. Simons scored a goal on his debut for the club, a 5–3 win over rivals Ajax in the Johan Cruyff Shield on 30 July. On 7 August, in his first Eredivisie game, Simons provided an assist for Johan Bakayoko, who opened the scoring in a 4–1 victory against newly promoted Emmen.


title: Xavi Simons

text: Simons has represented the Netherlands at under-15, under-16, under-17, and under-19 and under-21 levels.


title: Xavi Simons

text: On 21 October 2022, Simons joined the preselection of the Dutch national team for the first time in his career. A few weeks later, he was eventually called up for the World Cup in Qatar by head coach Louis van Gaal. On 3 December he made his World Cup debut against the United States with a 3-1 win, in the round of 16.


title: Xavi Simons

text: In March 2020, Simons was named on Goal's "NxGn 2020" list of 50 best wonderkids in world football. He was also included in The Guardian's "Next Generation 2020" in October. Simons has amassed a large following on social media platform Instagram, with over 4 million followers. He also has a sponsorship contract with sporting goods manufacturer Adidas.


title: Dutch Republic

text: The United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the (Seven) United Provinces, officially as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Dutch: "Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden"), and commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a federal republic that existed from 1579, during the Dutch Revolt, to 1795 (the Batavian Revolution). It was a predecessor state of the Netherlands and the first fully independent Dutch nation state.


title: Dutch Republic

text: The republic was established after seven Dutch provinces in the Spanish Netherlands revolted against rule by Spain. The provinces formed a mutual alliance against Spain in 1579 (the Union of Utrecht) and declared their independence in 1581 (the Act of Abjuration). It comprised Groningen, Frisia, Overijssel, Guelders, Utrecht, Holland and Zeeland.


title: Dutch Republic

text: Although the state was small and contained only around 1.5 million inhabitants, it controlled a worldwide network of seafaring trade routes. Through its trading companies, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (GWC), it established a Dutch colonial empire. The income from this trade allowed the Dutch Republic to compete militarily against much larger countries. It amassed a huge fleet of 2,000 ships, initially larger than the fleets of England and France combined. Major conflicts were fought in the Eighty Years' War against Spain (from the foundation of the Dutch Republic until 1648), the Dutch–Portuguese War (1602–1663), four Anglo-Dutch Wars (the first against the Commonwealth of England, two against the Kingdom of England, and a fourth against the Kingdom of Great Britain: 1652–1654, 1665–1667, 1672–1674 and 1780–1784), the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713), the War of Austrian Succession (1744-1748) and the War of the First Coalition (1792-1795) against the Kingdom of France.


title: Dutch Republic

text: The republic was more tolerant of different religions and ideas than its contemporary states were, allowing freedom of thought to its residents. Artists flourished under this regime, including painters such as Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer and many others. So did scientists, such as Hugo Grotius, Christiaan Huygens and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. Because Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world during much of the 17th century, this period became known in Dutch history as the Dutch Golden Age.


title: Dutch Republic

text: The republic was a confederation of provinces each with a high degree of independence from the federal assembly, known as the States General. In the Peace of Westphalia (1648) the republic gained approximately 20% more territory, located outside the member provinces, which was ruled directly by the States General as Generality Lands. Each province was led by an official known as the "stadtholder" (); this office was nominally open to anyone, but most provinces appointed a member of the House of Orange. The position gradually became hereditary, with the Prince of Orange simultaneously holding most or all of the stadtholderships, making him effectively the head of state. This created tension between political factions: the Orangists favoured a powerful stadtholder, while the Republicans favoured a strong States General. The Republicans forced two Stadtholderless Periods, 1650–1672 and 1702–1747, with the latter causing national instability and the end of Great Power status.


title: Dutch Republic

text: Economic decline led to a period of political instability known as the Patriottentijd (1780–87). This unrest was temporarily suppressed by a Prussian invasion in support of the stadtholder. The French Revolution and subsequent War of the First Coalition caused these tensions to reignite. Following military defeat by France, the stadtholder was expelled in the Batavian Revolution of 1795. This ended the Dutch Republic; it was succeeded by the Batavian Republic.