page_title: Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia, Volhynia and Northern Bukovina
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia, Volhynia and Northern Bukovina / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Prominent Ukrainians greet Germans in Western Ukraine 1941.
context_page_description: On the basis of a secret clause of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, capturing the eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic. Lwów, present day Lviv, the capital of the Lwów Voivodeship and the principal city and cultural center of the region of Galicia, was captured and occupied by September 22, 1939 along with other provincial capitals including Tarnopol, Brześć, Stanisławów, Łuck, and Wilno to the north. The eastern provinces of interwar Poland were inhabited by an ethnically mixed population, with ethnic Poles as well as Polish Jews dominant in the cities. These lands now form the backbone of modern Western Ukraine and West Belarus.
  In June 1940, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Romania, demanding the ceding of Northern Bukovina, a region with a large ethnic Ukrainian population. The annexation of these territories, which were added to Soviet Byelorussia and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, resulted in the Soviet state gaining 131,000 square kilometres, and increasing its population by over seven million people.
context_section_description: On June 22, 1941 Operation Barbarossa began, and western Ukraine was captured within weeks.  Prior to retreating, the Soviet authorities, unwilling to evacuate prisoners, chose to kill all inmates whether or not they had committed major or minor crimes and whether or not they were held for political reasons.  Estimates of the number of people killed vary from 15,000 to 40,000. Due to the brutality of the Soviet administration, many Ukrainians initially welcomed the German invasion. On June 30, 1941, Ukrainian nationalist commandos under German command captured Lviv which had been evacuated by Soviet forces and declared an independent state allied with Nazi Germany. This movement was quashed by the Germans, who split up western Ukraine.  Northern Bukovina was returned to Germany's ally, Romania.  Galicia, which had once been part of Austria, was made part of the General Government together with occupied Poland, while Volhynia was split off and attached to the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.  All of these regions would be captured and reintegrated into Soviet Ukraine in 1944.
caption: People, some of them in Ukrainian national dress, greeting Nazi Soldiers in 1941
exif: {}