Taras Bulba-Borovets

Taras Dmytrovych Borovets (Ukrainian: Тарас Дмитрович Борове́ць; March 9, 1908, Rovno County, Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire – May 15, 1981, Toronto, Canada) was a Ukrainian resistance leader during World War II. He is better known as Taras Bulba-Borovets after his childhood nickname Taras Bulba.

During the Interbellum, he led educational programs in Volhynia, and in 1930 the Ukrainian National Renaissance for which he was interned in 1934–35 in the Polish Bereza Kartuska Detention Camp. He was an active member of pro-Simon Petlyura movement, which was initially allied with Poland. However, after the Treaty of Riga which ended the Polish-Bolshevik War, and the failure of Poland to support the establishment of an independent Ukraine, Bulba-Borovets became resentful of the Polish government. After the Nazi invasion of Poland, he managed to get to the German occupied part of Poland, the General Government, and in Warsaw got in touch with members of the Ukrainian People's Republic, who told him to return to the area of Sarny, which he did in August 1940.

Afterward, after Soviet annexation of Western Ukrainian lands to the Ukrainian SSR Borovets organized the underground anti-Soviet resistance in Volhynia (called Polis'ska Sich) and after the German attack on the USSR he organized the first Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) also known as the Polissian Sich. It effectively fought against the Soviets and during the German occupation went into underground, after Borovets (according to his words) refused German demands that his troops participate in the massacres of Jews in the area of Olevsk. Borovets himself hid several Jewish families. From 1943 the Polisska Sich became known as the Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army and the insurgency was directed according to the plan of the General Command of the UNR. Borovets refused to join the forces of Stepan Bandera faction, and his wife was killed by OUN (B) assassins.

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