The Most Famous
MILITARY PERSONNELS from Ukraine
This page contains a list of the greatest Ukrainian Military Personnels. The pantheon dataset contains 1,468 Military Personnels, 38 of which were born in Ukraine. This makes Ukraine the birth place of the 11th most number of Military Personnels behind China and Italy.
Top 10
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Ukrainian Military Personnels of all time. This list of famous Ukrainian Military Personnels is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Ukrainian Military Personnels.
1. Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595 - 1657)
With an HPI of 72.90, Bohdan Khmelnytsky is the most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 55 different languages on wikipedia.
Bohdan Zynovyi Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky (Ruthenian: Ѕѣнові Богданъ Хмелнiцкiи; modern Ukrainian: Богдан Зиновій Михайлович Хмельницький; 1595 – 6 August 1657) was a Ruthenian nobleman and military commander of Ukrainian Cossacks as Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, which was then under the suzerainty of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates (1648–1654) that resulted in the creation of an independent Cossack state in Ukraine. In 1654, he concluded the Treaty of Pereyaslav with the Russian Tsar and allied the Cossack Hetmanate with Tsardom of Russia, thus placing central Ukraine under Russian protection. During the uprising the Cossacks led a massacre of thousands of Jewish people during 1648–1649 as one of the most traumatic events in the history of the Jews in Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism.
2. Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916 - 1974)
With an HPI of 71.38, Lyudmila Pavlichenko is the 2nd most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. Her biography has been translated into 48 different languages.
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko (Russian: Людмила Михайловна Павличенко; Ukrainian: Людмила Михайлівна Павличенко, romanized: Lyudmyla Mykhailivna Pavlychenko, née Belova; 12 July [O.S. 29 June] 1916 – 10 October 1974) was a Soviet sniper in the Red Army during World War II. She is credited with killing 309 enemy combatants. She served in the Red Army during the siege of Odessa and the siege of Sevastopol, during the early stages of the fighting on the Eastern Front. Her score of 309 kills likely places her within the top five snipers of all time, but her kills are likely much more numerous, as a confirmed kill has to be witnessed by a third party.After she was injured in battle by a mortar shell, she was evacuated to Moscow. After she recovered from her injuries, she trained other Red Army snipers and was a public spokeswoman for the Red Army. In 1942, she toured the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. After the war ended in 1945, she was reassigned as a senior researcher for the Soviet Navy. She died of a stroke at the age of 58.
3. Nestor Makhno (1888 - 1934)
With an HPI of 69.68, Nestor Makhno is the 3rd most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 54 different languages.
Nestor Ivanovych Makhno (7 November 1888 – 25 July 1934), also known as Bat'ko Makhno ("Father Makhno"), was a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and the commander of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine during the Ukrainian Civil War. He established the Makhnovshchina (loosely translated as "Makhno movement"), a mass movement by the Ukrainian peasantry to establish anarchist communism in the country between 1918 and 1921. Initially centered around Makhno's home province of Katerynoslav and hometown, Huliaipole, it came to exert a strong influence over large areas of southern Ukraine. Raised by a peasant family in the fervor around the 1905 Revolution, Makhno participated in a local anarchist group and spent seven years imprisoned for his involvement. With his release during the 1917 Revolution, Makhno became a local revolutionary leader in his hometown and oversaw the expropriation and redistribution of large estates to the peasantry. In the Ukrainian Civil War, Makhno sided with the Soviet Russian Bolsheviks against the Ukrainian nationalists and White movement, but his alliances with the Bolsheviks did not last. He rallied Bolshevik support to lead an insurgency defeating the Central Powers's occupation forces at the Battle of Dibrivka and establishing the Makhnovshchina. Makhno's troops briefly integrated with the Bolshevik Red Army in the 1919 Soviet invasion of Ukraine but split over differences on the movement's autonomy. Makhno rebuilt his army from the remains of Nykyfor Hryhoriv's forces in western Ukraine, routed the White Army at the Battle of Perehonivka, and captured most of southern and eastern Ukraine, where they again attempted to establish anarchist communism. Makhno's army fought the Bolshevik re-invasion of Ukraine in 1920 until a White Army offensive forced a short-lived Bolshevik–Makhnovist alliance that drove the Whites out of Crimea and ended the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War. The Bolsheviks immediately turned on Makhno, wounding him and driving him westward in August 1921 to Romanian concentration camps, Poland, and Europe before he settled in Paris with his wife and daughter. Makhno wrote memoirs and articles for radical newspapers, playing a role in the development of platformism. He became alienated from the French anarchist movement after disputes over synthesis anarchism and personal allegations of antisemitism. His family continued to be persecuted in the decades following his death of tuberculosis at the age of 45. Anarchist groups continue to draw on his name for inspiration.
4. Andrey Yeryomenko (1892 - 1970)
With an HPI of 64.76, Andrey Yeryomenko is the 4th most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.
Andrey Ivanovich Yeryomenko (Russian: Андре́й Ива́нович Ерёменко; Ukrainian: Андрій Іванович Єрьоменко; October 14 [O.S. October 2] 1892 – November 19, 1970) was a Soviet general during World War II and Marshal of the Soviet Union. During the war, Yeryomenko commanded the Southeastern Front (later renamed the Stalingrad Front) during the Battle of Stalingrad in summer 1942 and planned the successful defense of the city. He later commanded the armies responsible for the liberation of Western Hungary and Eastern Czechoslovakia in 1945.
5. Ivan Paskevich (1782 - 1856)
With an HPI of 62.77, Ivan Paskevich is the 5th most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 34 different languages.
Count Ivan Fyodorovich Paskevich-Erevansky, Serene Prince of Warsaw (Russian: Ива́н Фёдорович Паске́вич-Эрива́нский, светле́йший кня́зь Варша́вский, tr. Iván Fëdorovič Paskévič-Èrivánskij, svetléjšij knjaz’ Varšávskij; 19 May [O.S. 8 May] 1782 – 1 February [O.S. 20 January] 1856) was an Imperial Russian military leader of Cossack origin who was the Namiestnik of Poland. Paskevich is known for leading Russian forces in Poland during the November uprising and for a series of leadership roles throughout the early and mid-19th century, such as the Russo-Persian War (1826–28) and the beginning phase of the Crimean War. In Russian and general history, he is remembered as a prominent military commander, rated on a par with Ivan Dibich-Zabalkansky.Paskevich started as an officer during the Napoleonic wars serving in the battles of Austerlitz and Borodino. After the war, he was a leader in the Russo-Persian War (1826–28). He was made Count of Yerevan in 1828. Afterward, he became Namiestnik of Poland in 1831 after he crushed the Polish rebels in the November uprising. He then helped crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. His last engagement was the Crimean War. Paskevich died in Warsaw in 1856. He attained the rank of field marshal in the Russian army, and later in the Prussian and Austrian armies.
6. Alexander Samsonov (1859 - 1914)
With an HPI of 61.81, Alexander Samsonov is the 6th most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.
Aleksandr Vasilyevich Samsonov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Васи́льевич Самсо́нов, tr. Aleksándr Vasíl’evič Samsónov; 14 November [O.S. 2 November] 1859 – 30 August [O.S. 17 August] 1914) was a career officer in the cavalry of the Imperial Russian Army and a general during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. He was the commander of the Russian Second Army which was surrounded and defeated by the German Eighth Army in the Battle of Tannenberg, one of the early battles of World War I. Ashamed by his loss of the Army, Samsonov committed suicide while retreating from the battlefield.
7. Roman Shukhevych (1907 - 1950)
With an HPI of 61.42, Roman Shukhevych is the 7th most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.
Roman-Taras Yosypovych Shukhevych (Ukrainian: Рома́н-Тарас Йо́сипович Шухе́вич, also known by his pseudonym, Tur and Taras Chuprynka; 30 June 1907 – 5 March 1950) was a Ukrainian nationalist and a military leader of the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which during the Second World War fought against the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent against the Nazi Germany for Ukrainian independence. He collaborated with the Nazis from February 1941 to December 1942 as commanding officer of the Nachtigall Battalion in early 1941, and as a Hauptmann of the German Schutzmannschaft 201 auxiliary police battalion in late 1941 and 1942.Shukhevych was one of the perpetrators of the Galicia-Volhynia massacres of tens of thousands of Polish civilians. It is unclear whether and to what extent Shuchevych was responsible for the massacres of Poles in Volhynia, but he certainly condoned them after some time, and also directed the massacres of Poles in Eastern Galicia. Historian Per Anders Rudling has accused Ukrainian diaspora and Ukrainian academics of "ignoring, glossing over, or outright denying" his role in this and other war crimes.
8. Mikhail Kirponos (1892 - 1941)
With an HPI of 60.65, Mikhail Kirponos is the 8th most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.
Mikhail Petrovich Kirponos (Russian: Михаи́л Петро́вич Кирпоно́с, Ukrainian: Михайло Петрович Кирпонос, Mykhailo Petrovych Kyrponos; 12 January 1892 – 20 September 1941) was a Soviet general of the Red Army during World War II. Being accorded the highest military decoration, the Hero of the Soviet Union title, for the skill and courage in commanding a division in the 1939-1940 Finnish campaign, Kirponos is remembered for his leading role in the failed defense of Ukraine during the Battle of Brody, the Battle of Uman, and Kiev in the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. He was killed during mortar shelling while trying to break out of the Kiev encirclement on 20 September 1941.
9. Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski (1895 - 1966)
With an HPI of 60.14, Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski is the 9th most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.
Generał Tadeusz Komorowski (1 June 1895 – 24 August 1966), better known by the name Bór-Komorowski (after one of his wartime code-names: Bór – "The Forest") was a Polish military leader. He was appointed commander in chief a day before the capitulation of the Warsaw Uprising and following World War II, 32nd Prime Minister of Poland, 3rd Polish government-in-exile in London.
10. Alfred Redl (1864 - 1913)
With an HPI of 60.03, Alfred Redl is the 10th most famous Ukrainian Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.
Alfred Redl (14 March 1864 – 25 May 1913) was an Austro-Hungarian military officer who rose to head the Evidenzbureau, the counterintelligence wing of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was one of the leading figures of pre-World War I espionage; his term in office was marked by radical innovations and the use of advanced technology to ensnare foreign spies. Due to the innovations he introduced, Redl's successor, Major Maximilian Ronge, ultimately learned in 1913 that Redl himself was also a highly paid spy, working for the intelligence service of the Imperial Russian Army. Upon being exposed as a Russian spy, Redl committed suicide. Although Redl's homosexuality was publicized during the affair, later investigation of Russian archives revealed that his Russian handlers had no knowledge of it, and his sexuality was unrelated to his decision to spy. Instead, he was enticed by the material benefits. Redl's revelations did not have a significant effect on the course of the war.
Pantheon has 38 people classified as military personnels born between 1595 and 1980. Of these 38, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased military personnels include Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and Nestor Makhno. As of April 2022, 4 new military personnels have been added to Pantheon including Nikolai Linevich, Yevgeniya Rudneva, and Marie Ljalková.
Deceased Military Personnels
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Bohdan Khmelnytsky
1595 - 1657
HPI: 72.90
Lyudmila Pavlichenko
1916 - 1974
HPI: 71.38
Nestor Makhno
1888 - 1934
HPI: 69.68
Andrey Yeryomenko
1892 - 1970
HPI: 64.76
Ivan Paskevich
1782 - 1856
HPI: 62.77
Alexander Samsonov
1859 - 1914
HPI: 61.81
Roman Shukhevych
1907 - 1950
HPI: 61.42
Mikhail Kirponos
1892 - 1941
HPI: 60.65
Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski
1895 - 1966
HPI: 60.14
Alfred Redl
1864 - 1913
HPI: 60.03
Grigory Kulik
1890 - 1950
HPI: 59.37
Pavel Batitsky
1910 - 1984
HPI: 59.18
Newly Added Military Personnels (2022)
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Nikolai Linevich
1839 - 1908
HPI: 52.14
Yevgeniya Rudneva
1921 - 1944
HPI: 48.89
Marie Ljalková
1920 - 2011
HPI: 46.10
Vladimir Vysotsky
1954 - 2021
HPI: 38.68
Which Military Personnels were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 25 most globally memorable Military Personnels since 1700.
