Sydor, Vasyl

Sydor, Vasyl (pseuds: Shelest, Vyshyty, Konrad, Zov), b 24 February 1910 in Spasiv, Sokal county, Galicia, d 17 April 1949 in Perehinske raion, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Senior officer in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). In February 1935 he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) activities. After he was paroled in 1936, he became a member of the OUN Home Leadership and organized the OUN network in Volhynia and the Kholm region. He was imprisoned again in August 1937 and was elected spokesman of Ukrainian political prisoners in the Brygidky prison in Lviv. During the 1939–41 Soviet occupation of Galicia he was in charge of military affairs in the OUN Home Leadership. A member of the OUN Supreme Military Staff in 1941, he served in the Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists (1941–3) until his arrest by the Gestapo on 8 January 1943. After his release he joined UPA in Volhynia and became its second chief of staff. In 1943 he was elected to the OUN Supreme Council by the OUN Third Extraordinary Grand Assembly and in January 1944, with the rank of major, assumed command of the UPA-West. He was promoted to colonel (1946) and OUN general judge (1947) and appointed OUN chief for the Carpathian Mountains region. He was killed in combat with Soviet troops in the Limnytsia River Valley.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]