Operation Vistula
While Operation Vistula was underway in south-western Poland, the Soviet NKVD deported over 114,000 mostly women and children from West Ukraine to Kazakh SSR and Siberia during the parallel Operation West. Only 19,000 men were among the Soviet deportees, most of them sent to coal mines and stone quarries in the north. None of the families deported by the NKVD received any farms or empty homes to live in. They were instantaneously forced into extreme poverty and hunger. Dr Zbigniew Palski informs also that during Operation Vistula none of the three conditions of the United Nations Charter of 26 June 1945 about the possible struggle toward their own self-determination among the Polish deportees was broken at the time. Other international laws were already in effect.