On this day in 2014, the Ukrainian forces liberated Mariupol, an industrial city and port situated at the shore of the Azov Sea in the Donetsk region. About 80 armed Russian mercenaries, with the support of local separatists, captured government and law enforcement buildings in the city in May. As a result of the Spec Op conducted by 150 Ukrainian servicemen, 5 Russian terrorists were liquidated, 17 were wounded, and another 30 were arrested. Ukrainian casualties: five wounded soldiers. No casualties among civilians. Russia recaptured Mariupol in May 2022, as a result of the intensive aerial and artillery bombardments, fierce urban combat, and a prolonged siege. The city has remained under Russian occupation for the last four years.

On this day in 1918, the delegation of the new Ukrainian State signed a preliminary peace treaty with Russia (the new Russian Socialist Federal Republic) to start negotiations about territories after the collapse of the Tsarism and the Russian Empire. For the Bolsheviks' government of Vladimir Lenin, the treaty with Ukrainians was an unpleasant obligation to follow the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with four Central Powers — Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire — signed on March 3, 1918, that ended Russia’s participation in World War I at a significant territorial and political cost. The Kyiv delegation included the Ukrainian Supreme Court justice, minister of foreign affairs, international law professor, and two high-ranking military officers who were deputy commanders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Navy. The Moscow delegation was led by pure Bolshevik Party revolutionaries of a Ukrainian and Bulgarian descent (one was arrested by Stalin in 1938 and murdered). In mere six months after signing the treaty with Ukrainians, who dreamed about their own state, the Russian obligations to grant Ukraine independence vanished as the Treaty of Brest Litovsk was annulled. The Bolsheviks immediately invaded Ukraine on two fronts and ended this independence experiment by 1920.

On this day in 1993, Mstislav I, the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) in exile, died in Canada. He's buried in South Bound Brook, NJ. Born in Poltava, Ukraine, as Stepan Skrypnyk, he was a nephew of Symon Petliura, one of the military leaders of the Ukrainian independence experiment in 1917-1920. Mstislav was one of a few survived leaders of Ukrainian Orthodox Christianity which was destroyed by Russian Communists, who installed the Russian-speaking church instead. Ukrainian Orthodoxy existed only in secret or in exile. But history gave it another chance after Ukraine's independence in 1991. However, it took three decades to get back the unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Various Kyiv Presidents supported the revival, but it also required legislative limitations on the influence of Moscow-controlled church, an ideological transition among Moscow-oriented Christian believers, and a generational increase in the number of young parishioners. This revival is still ongoing.

On this day in 1926, the British government under Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin issued a formal diplomatic note of protest to the Soviet Union. The note accused the Soviet regime—then consolidating power under dictator Joseph Stalin—of financing and encouraging mass workers’ street protests and the recent General Strike in the United Kingdom. Read about it in Ukraine Decoded, the publication on Substack that explores history of uneasy relations between Moscow and the West. open.substack.com/pub/ukrain…

Today is the 1,568 day of the Russian full-scale war against Ukraine. This is now longer than the World War One that devastated Europe and caused the collapse of the Russian Empire.

On this day in 1918, the Jewish People's University was opened in building #34 on the main Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv, Ukraine. This was the first in the world college with Yiddish as a language of teaching and study. This occurred in Ukraine's People's Republic, a short-lived experiment of Ukrainian independence 1917-1920 following the collapse of Russian Tsarism and Bolshevik Revolution in Petrograd. Building #34, as many others on the Khreshchatyk Street, didn't survive the Soviet bombardments in 1944.

On this day in 1935, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union adopted an amendment to the Criminal Code treating unauthorized flight abroad as treason. It carried the death penalty or up to 10 years imprisonment, plus severe collective punishment for family members (5–10 years imprisonment if they knew of the plans, or exile to remote areas like Siberia for 5 years even if ignorant). This date is considered the start of the infamous "iron curtain" regime. The death penalty for Soviet escapees and their family punishment was abolished by Nikita Khrushchev after the death of the dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953. However, travel restrictions for Soviet people and the punishment of incarceration for those captured at the border remained in place till spring 1991.

On this day in 2022, a precise Ukrainian missile strike killed about 200 Russian mercenaries of PWC Wagner at once. They just arrived from Russia and were headquartered in the hall of the stadium in Kadiivka city (former Stakhanov) in the eastern Luhansk region. This strike is one of the first alleged uses of the US-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).

Today is the birthday of Konstanty Plisowski (1890), a Polish Brigade General born in the central Ukrainian region of Podillya (current Vinnytsia). He was a cavalry commander, remembered for his bravery in World War I and for stopping the ragtag Bolshevik cavalry of Semyon Budyonny. But mostly Plisowski is known for volunteering out of his retirement to command the troops in the Polish Defensive War of 1939 against the pre-WWII Soviet invasion. In particular, he led the defense operation of the Berestechko Fortress (currently Brest in Belarus) but was captured by the Soviets. They tortured and murdered him in a detention cell in the secret police NKVD building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in April 1940.

On this day in 1989, during the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport, the Soviet Union stunned the world with An-225 Mriya (Dream) the largest cargo aircraft ever built, designed for transporting oversized payloads, including the Soviet Buran space shuttle. The aircraft was designed and manufactured in Ukraine. Ironically, this only completed An-225 was destroyed by the Russian Army in February 2022 during the Battle of Antonov Airport near Kyiv, at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government pledged to build another An-225 someday in the future. Soviet Buran space shuttle completed only a single automated orbital flight in 1988 before this costly, unbearable Moscow's program was canceled.

On this day in 2024, the newest Ukrainian long-range attack drones struck the remote Russian air base "Aktyubinsk." The strike damaged Su-57 parked on the tarmac, one of only a few Russian stealth multirole fighter jets of the latest 5th generation. The distance from Kyiv to Aktyubinsk is 718 miles (1,156 km). #OnThisDay #history #Ukraine #OTD #OnThisDayInHistory #Russia #AirForce #aviation #drones #war

On this day in 2023, Ukraine launched its long-anticipated summer counteroffensive, with the main thrust directed toward the Zaporizhzhia region in the south. The strategic objectives were ambitious: breach Russian defensive lines, advance to the Azov Sea, and ultimately isolate Russian-occupied Crimea by severing key supply routes. This operation followed two major successes in 2022 but unfolded under faded momentum, far more challenging conditions, and ultimately stalled with limited territorial gains and high costs. This failure cast a shadow over the reputation of then-Commander-in-Chief General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, who later faced dismissal. Read analysis of it in Ukraine Decoded, the Substack publication: ukrainedecoded.substack.com/… Photo credit: 22nd Ukrainian Mechanized Brigade, 2025.

On this day in 2025, the Ukrainian F-16 "Fighting Falcon" fighter jet shot down the Russian multirole Su-35 "Super Flanker" during a dogfight in the air above the Kursk Oblast of Russia. This is the first known combat kill of the newest Russian air superiority fighter jet.

Today is the birthday of Ivan Lukashevych, 55, a Ukraine's Brigade General of military counterintelligence, who is awarded with the highest title Hero of Ukraine (2025). He's a designer of MCR Horizon's Lord, the newest Ukrainian anti-materiel sniper rifle. He's also a co-creator of Sea Baby, the series of unmanned sea surface drones that devastated Russian Black Sea Navy and shadow tanker fleet.

On this day in 2014, during the early stages of Russia's hybrid invasion of Ukraine, Russian mercenaries led by the FSB operative Ihor Gorkin and armed with MANPADs shot down a Ukrainian Air Force An-30B reconnaissance aircraft near the occupied city of Sloviansk in the Donbas region. The aircraft conducted surveillance and photographic reconnaissance over the area. Despite the aircraft catching fire, the crew heroically diverted the burning plane away from nearby apartment blocks to minimize civilian casualties. Out of the eight crew members aboard, five were killed, including the pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Kostiantyn Mohylko. youtu.be/USkIDjRhfmI?si=VgMx…

On this day in 2014, the chocolate businessman Petro Poroshenko was inaugurated as Ukraine's fifth President following the bloody EuroMaidan uprising, the Russian annexation of Crimea, and the hybrid invasion of the Donbas. He made painful compromises with Russia and signed two Minsk Agreements making a deal with the Donbas separatists and buying several more years of peace. Currently, Poroshenko is sanctioned in his own country and criminally investigated for alleged treason.

On this day in 2023, the Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka dam over the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, causing its destruction, mass flooding, and ecological disaster with casualties and displacement of affected civilians down the river. Photo credit: Maxar. #OTD #OnThisDay #Ukraine #war

On this day in 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton touched down in Kyiv for a visit that underscored Ukraine’s growing importance on the post-Cold War stage. Fresh off his re-election in 1999, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma hosted the American leader for talks centered on deepening Western integration, advancing democratic and economic reforms, and finally addressing the lingering nightmare of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Read more about it in Ukraine Decoded, the Substack publication! open.substack.com/pub/ukrain…

Today is the birthday of Ruslan Khomchak, 59, a Ukrainian army general who commanded the troops that were massacred during their exit from the Russian encirclement near Ilovaisk in the Donbas region in August 2014. The command of the Anti-Terrorist Operation, incl. Khomchak, believed in Russian assurances that the passage would be safe. Officially, 366 Ukrainian soldiers were killed during the withdrawal, with 429 severely wounded and 300 captured. This unprecedented loss triggered the first round of Minsk Agreements where Kyiv had to compromise with separatists backed by Moscow. General Viktor Muzhenko, then Commander-in-Chief, suggested that the incompetence of Ukrainian commanders, and the large number of Russian troops fighting for the separatists, were largely to blame for such disastrous outcome. Nevertheless, general Khomchak was elevated to the top military posts, including the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces in 2020-2021, by the comedian Volodymyr Zelensky immediately after he became President. Critics say that at that time Ukraine ignored basic preparations for the full-scale war. Currently, Khomchak is the deputy chief of the National Security and Defense Council, the highest wartime executive body led personally by Zelensky.

On this day in 1989, the largest train catastrophe in the Soviet Union occurred near Ufa, Siberia. Two passenger trains carrying up to 1,500 people in sleep cars exploded and burned down while passing each other at night in a valley filled with natural gas. In minutes, 575 passengers burned alive, including 181 children. 623 passengers survived but got burns and various injuries. The gas entered a low-lying valley over 3 hours due to a technological accident -- a rupture in the above-ground gas pipeline transporting it from Siberia to the Russian regions near the Volga River. The catastrophe could have been prevented if the pipeline personnel had shut it down immediately after the alert of a sharp pressure drop. Instead, the shift manager ordered an increase in gas pumping to ensure industrial consumers receive it in full. This tragedy, along with the Chornobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, is another example of top-level managerial negligence in the USSR, because decision makers were all Communist Party appointees, who prioritized ideology over safety and people's lives.