Fact #30
The first constitution in the world was written by a Ukrainian.
It is believed that the Ukrainian Pylyp Orlyk created one of the first constitutions in the world. On April 5, 1710, he was elected hetman of the Zaporozhian army.
On the same day, he announced the document as a contract between the Hetman of the Zaporizhzhya Army, Pylyp Orlyk, and the foreman and Cossacks of the army, and was entitled “The Constitution of the Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporizhzhya Army.” In the USA, the Constitution was adopted in 1787, in France and Poland only in 1791.
Fact #31
Zaporizhia Sich is one of the first democratic organizations in the world.
Zaporizhzhya Sich — a socio-political and military-administrative organization of the Ukrainian Cossacks — is rightfully considered one of the first democratic organizations in the world.
The Zaporizhzhya Army is the name of the Cossack military-political formations of the 16th-18th centuries. In Ukrainian historiography, the term Zaporizhzhya Army most often refers to one of three meanings: 1) a military-political organization centered in Zaporizhzhya Sich; 2) the state formation of the Hetmanship, which arose during the liberation war of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi in the middle of the 17th century on the territory of the Middle Dnieper, Polissia, Bratslav region and Zaporozhye; 3) the name of the registered army in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Hetmanship.
Fact #32
The Ukrainian rebel army was able to hold out for almost 20 years in the occupied territory.
The UPA armies set an absolute record, holding on to the actually occupied territory for almost twenty years. Even Fidel Castro’s Cuban rebels studied the technologies and methods of Ukrainian soldiers.
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) is a military-political formation that operated in Ukraine during 1942-1960. From the very beginning of its existence, the UPA fought on three fronts: with the troops of the Third Reich and its allies, the Polish Resistance Movement (Home Army, Ludova Army) and Soviet partisans.
With the return of the Soviet regime to the western Ukrainian lands, the UPA was able to actively resist the punitive units of the NKVD for a few more years.