‘The lifeblood and backbone’ Zelensky’s chief of staff says Ukrainians and Western aid were crucial to defeating Hitler, rails against ‘Russian myth’ of ‘solo Soviet victory’
On Friday, Russia marked the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, rekindling debates over who deserves the most credit today for ending the war. The Kremlin has made the USSR’s defeat of Hitler a central pillar of its contemporary legitimacy, while Ukrainian officials have staked their own claim on victory over the Nazis without endorsing the Soviet legacy embraced by Moscow. On May 7, Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on his Telegram channel that victory in World War II would have been unattainable for the USSR without the Ukrainian people and the help of Western allies. Meduza reviews Yermak’s remarks and weighs them against the historical record.
“On this day of remembrance and victory over Nazism, I want to write once again that the greatest contribution to the defeat of Hitler was made by the Ukrainian people, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other allies. Moscow would have been occupied and destroyed,” Yermak argued on his blog, calling Ukraine “the lifeblood and backbone of the Soviet front.” He added that 8–10 million Ukrainians were killed during the war, the highest death toll among all Soviet republics, and said “60 percent of Soviet divisions were formed or staffed by Ukrainians.”
Ukraine became the site of the fiercest fighting, from the defense of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and the Donbas to the Battle of Stalingrad, where thousands of Ukrainians fought. After Ukraine was liberated, it was Ukrainian infrastructure — railways, factories, collective farms — that became the foundation of the Soviet home front. […] And it was Ukrainians who participated in the final assault on the Third Reich and played a significant role in the Berlin operation.
Speaking of the West’s role, Yermak highlighted the American Lend-Lease program as a key source of material support for the Soviet war effort. He credited the United Kingdom for strikes behind enemy lines that prevented Hitler from concentrating all his forces against the USSR.
“Without the U.S., Moscow wouldn’t have had the resources. Without Ukraine, there would have been no army. Without Britain, Hitler wouldn’t have been forced to divert his focus to the West. The myth of the USSR and Russians winning the war alone is a political construct created to assert Moscow’s postwar hegemonic ambitions,” Yermak concluded. “Putin lies constantly. This Russian myth must be forever buried in the coffin of history.”
What does the historical record say?
The presence of Ukrainians in the Red Army fluctuated over the course of the war, due to German and Romanian troops quickly seizing the Ukrainian SSR’s territory in 1941, before the USSR completed its mobilization process. This led to a drop in the share of Ukrainians in the Soviet military as casualties mounted. In 1944, during the liberation of Ukraine, its population became the driving force behind continued Soviet mobilization, and the proportion of Ukrainians in the military rose sharply.
Historians question the accuracy of the USSR’s last prewar census in 1939, which recorded a total population of 170 million people. The records showing more than 28 million Ukrainians are particularly contentious, given that Soviet officials sought to conceal this group’s elevated mortality during the famine of the early 1930s. As a result, the exact number of Ukrainians (and residents of Ukraine) in the USSR as of summer 1941 is unknown. Based on highly imprecise official data, Ukrainians made up about 18–20 percent of the Soviet population. Meanwhile, drawing on official documents from the Soviet Defense Ministry held in the Russian Military’s Central Archive, historian Alexey Bezugolny wrote in his 2021 monograph, The National Composition of the Red Army, 1918–1945: A Historical and Statistical Study, that Ukrainians comprised 10.87 percent of the active-duty army as of January 1, 1943.
In the latter half of 1943, this share began to rise sharply: by July 1, 1944, it had reached 21.17 percent. On January 1, 1945, more than 27 percent of wounded soldiers receiving treatment were Ukrainians. By Victory Day on May 9, the share of Ukrainians among all active-duty personnel had fallen to 20.44 percent due to combat losses.
In total, nearly 1.4 million Ukrainians were killed (or taken prisoner) throughout the war, which amounts to roughly 16 percent of the Red Army’s irrecoverable losses. In total, Ukraine lost up to nine million people during the war (including those killed, those who never returned from captivity or forced labor in Germany, and those who died prematurely). More than 1.5 million of these people were Jews murdered by Hitler’s forces.