Malets, Viktor

Malets, Viktor [Малець, Віктор; Malec'], b 1 October 1894 in Chuhuiv, Zmiiv county, Kharkiv gubernia, d 9 July 1969 in London. Military figure. An officer in the Russian army during the First World War, in December 1917 he joined the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic and became staff captain in the First Serdiuk Division (see Serdiuk guard divisions), battalion commander in the Second Zaporozhian Regiment (October 1918), and commander of the 19th Zaporozhian Republican Regiment (April 1919) (see Zaporozhian Corps). In 1920 he commanded the 48th Battalion of the Sixth Sich Division of the UNR Army and retreated with it into Poland. In the 1920s he studied engineering at the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Poděbrady and then served as a major in the Polish army. In 1940 he organized and directed an officer school of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) near Cracow, and in autumn 1941 he served as an officer with the OUN expeditionary groups (Melnykites) in central Ukraine. From May 1943 he was in charge of the officers’ sector at the Military Board of the Division Galizien. After being released from British internment in Rimini in 1948, for many years he served as a representative of the defense department of the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic and president of the Ukrainian Combatants’ Council and Ukrainian Officers Club in England.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]