Ukraine was part of the USSR until 1991. It is therefore difficult to determine the actual number of German war dead for this area, since the available data from the former German armed forces refers to the entire territory of the former Soviet Union. There are reports of the death or grave of approximately 1.88 million war dead, but estimates put the number of dead at 2.2 million. In addition, around 118,000 places of loss have been registered.
Due to the unexpectedly large number of POW and internee cemeteries still to be found, the plan to restore all of these sites at their original locations had to be abandoned and the idea of combining the dead from these cemeteries into fewer, larger collective cemeteries had to be considered.
In Ukraine, the Commission has set up five collective cemeteries for around 40,000 fallen soldiers each in line with its planning concept. The former military cemeteries of Shitomir-Hegewald, Saporoshje and Bronniki have been preserved. The naming of the graves at the collective cemeteries of Potelitsch and Charkow is ongoing.
The legal basis for the work of the Volksbund has existed since 1994 and has its origins in a joint declaration by the Federal Republic of Germany and Ukraine, which was adopted during a visit by the then Federal Chancellor Dr. Helmut Kohl. Point 14 states: “Germany and Ukraine agree to facilitate access to graves, their preservation and maintenance, and to give the other side, as far as possible, the opportunity to erect dignified memorials or cemeteries that commemorate peace and to place them under the protection of the law. They will support the cooperation between the organizations responsible for the maintenance of war graves on the basis of an agreement on war graves maintenance”. This war graves agreement was signed in Bonn on May 29, 1996. It came into force in Ukraine on June 15, 1997. According to the agreement, the German Commission is responsible for this task in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In Ukraine, the task falls to the Interdepartmental State Commission for the Preservation of the Memory of the Victims of War and Political Repression. Within just four years, the Commission was able to complete the construction of the five large collective cemeteries by the end of 1999 and take over their care and maintenance. However, the recovery and reburial of the dead will take years.