On June 22, 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union marking the beginning of the Great Patriotic War

June 22, 2013 (http://news.xinhuanet.com) With commemorative events, Ukraine on Friday marked the 72nd anniversary of the start of the Soviet Union's involvement in the World War II, known as the Great Patriotic War in the former Soviet republics.During a ceremony, President Viktor Yanukovych laid flowers at the Monument of War Victims and said that Ukrainians should keep the memories of the war alive.

"The current and future generations should know everything about that terrible war, about every drop of blood, every tear shed in this war. Hard truth about the Great Patriotic War is still with us," Yanukovych said.

A moment of silence was observed in honor of the millions of Soviet soldiers who died during the war that lasted nearly four years. Nazi Germany attacked Kiev in the early hours of June 22, 1941.

The term Great Patriotic War  is used in Ukraine to describe the period from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 in the many fronts of the eastern campaign of WWII between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany with its allies.

With 134 Divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, less than two years after the German-Soviet Pact was signed. Three army groups, including more than three million German soldiers, supported by 650,000 troops from Finland and Romania, and later augmented by units from Italy, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary, attacked the Soviet Union across a broad front, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. For months, the Soviet leadership had refused to heed warnings from the Western Powers of the German troop buildup along its western border. Germany and its Axis partners thus achieved almost complete tactical surprise. Much of the existing Soviet air force was destroyed on the ground; the Soviet armies were initially overwhelmed. German units encircled millions of Soviet soldiers, who were cut off from supplies and reinforcements.

Contract army: is it possible to cancel compulsory military service by 2014?

www.for-ua.com 5 June 2013
Total strength of Ukrainian army will be reduced from 184 thousand to 122 thousand soldiers, press office of the Defense Ministry reports. Last week the Cabinet approved the army reform state program for 2013-2017, which provides for the optimization of the army to ensure its combat capability, which will be achieved primarily by reducing the number of personnel, without affecting the fighting capacity.
Moreover, the program also foresees improvement of social protection for militaries and their families, as well upgrading of equipment and armament. The press office also reminds that the last conscription will held this autumn, and the last conscript will leave the service in 2014.

As ForUm wrote in the article "Volunteer army: inevitable or incredible?", the authorities have been talking about contract-based army for a long time. Despite permanent lack of finances, the Armed Forces already have an experience of forming divisions and corps by this principle. Thus, in 2000 the Armed Forces numbered 28.8 thousand contract militaries, and in 2004 - 40.7 thousand soldiers. As of February 1, 2013 the Armed Forces of Ukraine consist of 33% of conscripts and 54% of contract militaries.

A holiday of military history in Djuramossa

I was very please to be in the holiday of the military history in Djuramosa. I’ve never seen before so many guests who came from the whole Sweden to participate in this event.
Most of all, I was impressed with military show. Some pictures taken in the hospitable Djuramossa you can see below. Many participants and spectators were able to by a lot of books and DVDs on military history in SMB book tent. Those who got hungry, got a chance to test a real military pea soup. Even a heavy hailstorm failed to spoil such a nice holiday!

Special Finnish mission to Poltava

Pekka Visuri, Doctor of Political Sciences and retired Army colonel, has lectured on some aspects of Ukrainian and Finnish military history on March 12th in the Poltava Battle Museum. The lecture went off enchantingly. Many scholars, teachers and students were present. The lecture was a joint event with the Finnish Embassy in Ukraine. Before the beginning of the lecture the director of the museum Natalia Bilan gave the flour to Ambassador of the Finnish Republic to Ukraine Arja Makkonen, who introduced him to the audience.

The lecturer has worked 15 years as researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki and from 2008 at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. He has been adjunct professor at the National Defence University in Helsinki, specialized in security policy, strategy and political history. At present he is senior fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. He is now working in the EU/CBSS projects (EUSBR, PA 14 and Anvil) concerning the strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, special area civil protection.

Adolf Hitler's World War II Eastern Front military headquarters near Vinnitsa (Ukraine)

Führerhauptquartier Werwolf was the codename used for one of Adolf Hitler's World War II Eastern Front military headquarters located in a pine forest about 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) north of Vinnitsa in the central Ukraine that was used between 1942 and 1943. It was one of a number of Führer Headquarters throughout Europe, and the most easterly ever used by Hitler in person. The name is derived from Werwolf, which is German for werewolf. The naming scheme is in accord with other code-names given to Führerhauptquartiere during the Second World War, such as Wolfsschanze. Several were named for Hitler himself, whose nickname was Wolf, an old German form of Adolf.

The complex was located in a pine forest between the villages of Stryzhavka and Kolo-Mikhailovka on the Kiev highway. It was built between December 1941 and June 1942 under top secret conditions. The Wehrmacht had its regional headquarters in Vinnytsia, and the Luftwaffe had a strong presence at their airbase in Kalinovka, about 20 km away. Hitler's accommodation at Werwolf consisted of a modest log cabin built around a private courtyard with its own concrete bunker. The rest of the complex consisted of about 20 wooden cottages and barracks and up to three "B" class bunkers, surrounded by ring of barbed wire and ground defensive positions connected by underground tunnels. A couple of observation points were set up on platforms in the oak trees surrounding the pine forest. The area was surrounded by a defensive strip of bunkers, anti-aircraft guns and tanks, as well as anti-tank ditches and minefields. There was a tea house, a barber shop, a bathhouse, a sauna, a cinema and even an open swimming pool for the inhabitants' use. Although this pool was primarily intended for Hitler, he never once swam in it. The facility also contained a large vegetable garden organised by the German horticultural company Zeidenspiner to provide Hitler with a secure supply of food. Two artesian wells supplied the site with water, and the site had its own power generation facilities. The bunkers were constructed by Organisation Todt using local Ukrainian workers, forced labour but mainly Russian prisoners of war. Many of the workers were subsequently murdered to maintain secrecy of the site. During his Eastern campaign, Adolf Hitler lived mainly at FHQ Wolfsschanze (near Rastenburg, Poland). He stayed at FHQ Werwolf only three times:

• 16 July to 30 October 1942.
• 19 February to 13 March 1943.
• 27 August to 15 September 1943.

Plans in Ukraine to open a museum at the ruins of a bunker used by Hitler during World War II have provoked concerns it could become a shrine for neo-Nazis. The decision by local authorities in the centrally located city of Vinnitsa to turn the site of the Wehrwolf bunker into a tourist attraction has caused so much controversy that President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych requested on a recent visit to Vinnitsa that the matter be settled in a local referendum. Originally, the museum had been due to open in May 2012 to coincide with the commemoration of victory over the Nazis. But communist and socialist party activists opposed the idea, arguing that the creation of such a museum would be tantamount to spreading Nazi propaganda.

Stasi Museum in Leipzig

This shot of me and my grandson Kirill was taken in 2012 at the entrance to the Museum of  Stasi in Leipzig.

The Ministry for State Security (German:Ministerium für Staatssicherheit), commonly known as the Stasi, was the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic or GDR (informally known as East Germany). It has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies in the world.

The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the city. The Stasi motto was "Schild und Schwert der Partei" (Shield and Sword of the Party), that is the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Although Stasi was superficially granted independence in 1957, until 1990 the KGB continued to maintain liaison officers in all eight main Stasi directorates, each with his own office inside the Stasi's Berlin compound, and in each of the fifteen Stasi district headquarters around East Germany, including Leipzig. Collaboration was so close that the KGB invited the Stasi to establish operational bases in Moscow and Leningrad to monitor visiting East German tourists. In 1978  KGB officers in East Germany were granted the same rights and powers they enjoyed in the Soviet Union.

For a glimpse of life in Leipzig during the Cold War, many tourists visit the Stasi Museum, which documents the work of the secret service in the former GDR. Set in an original Stasi administration office, the museum gives fascinating and chilling insights into the function, methods and history of the secret service; you can see original surveillance equipment, police documents, letters, photos, a prison cell, and even an odor archive of suspects (yellow napkins in a glass jars).

Soviet cruise missile AS-5 "Kelt" in Poltava

The Raduga KSR-2 (NATO reporting name: AS-5 "Kelt") was a Soviet cruise missile developed in 1958 and entered service in 1962. The missile was normally armed with a conventional high explosive warhead, although it could be fitted with a one megaton nuclear warhead. The first testing of the missile began in 1958, with two missiles being carried under the wings of a modified Tu-16 bomber designated as Tu-16KSR-2. The bomber was fitted with a newly developed search and target illumination radar Ruby which has a maximum range of approximately 200 kilometers. During the tests missiles were fired at ships and ground targets. Once the launching aircraft's radar has locked onto a target, the missile can be launched. The rocket motor fires immediately after release in boost mode, accelerating the missile to its cruise speed. Once the missile turns on an approach course to the target, the motor switches to cruise mode, shutting down one of its chambers. The missile's autopilot then flies a course using inertial guidance toward the target. In anti-shipping mode the missile engages its J-band active radar in the final approach to the target.As about missile’s combat use, Egyptian Tu-16 bombers reportedly launched thirteen KSR-2 and twelve KSR-11 missiles during the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
One such cruise missile is preserving in the Poltava Museum of Long-Range Aviation in the open air, which is located on the territory of the former air base. Museum includes Tu-160 strategic bomber, Tu-95 MS turboprop strategic bomber and rocket carrier, Tu-22 M3 long-range supersonic bomber and rocket carrier with changeable geometry of the wings, Tu-22 KN passenger jet, Su-15 UM fighter, Tu-16 medium-range bomber.