Self-defense Kushch Units

SKU members joined the UPA, but over time, when the units were to be disbanded, partisans were sent to rural self-defense formations.

Their weaponry consisted of a small number of firearms, and mainly agricultural and household tools, e.g. axes, pitchforks, scythes, knives.

[3] SKU units on the Polish territory defended the Ukrainian populations of "Zakerzonia", or Transcurzonia, i.e. "the land beyond the Curzon Line", or more accurately, the land to the west border approved (with later marginal adjustments) by the final resolution of the 1944 Yalta Conference as the border between Poland and the USSR, which included a substantial Ukrainian minority at the time.

Polish researcher of the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia Ewa Siemaszko believes that due to the small number of firearms SKU could not properly resist the Soviet partisans and the German occupiers, and therefore the OUN was using them to attack Polish settlements,[4] although others contradict this.

[5] This is how Yuri Sudyn (born 1933) recalls his older brother Dmytro Sudyn, who was born in 1928 in the village of Stary Lubliniec to the west of the Polish-Ukrainian border, a member of the local SKU "Trembita" (who collaborated with the UPA kurin "Mesnyky"):[6] Since then, my brother has been at home very little.