Mykola Yunakiv

Who was Mykola Yunakiv?

Mykola Yunakiv was a Ukrainian general, military pedagogue. He was a general in the army of the Russian Empire and the Ukrainian People's Republic.

Yunakiv finished the Nicholas General Staff Academy in Saint Petersburg. In 1910 he defended his dissertation on the Swedish campaign in Ukraine 1708-09 and year later became a professor of a military history. In 1914 Yunakiv was pressured to resign after his implementation of teaching reforms found no support in the academy.

During the World War I Yunakiv was appointed as a chief of staff serving for the Russian 4th Army and later a commander of the 8th Army fighting on the Romanian Front. In a critical period in the history of the Ukrainian People's Republic in December 1917 he joined the Ukrainian military administration as a head of the education department.

Only in August 1919 he was appointed as a chief of joint stuff for the both Ukrainian armies during the counter advance onto Kiev and Odessa. On October 10, 1919 Yunakiv was promoted to Major General and during the following year briefly served as a minister of defense and a head of the Supreme Military Council of Ukraine. Later he emigrated to Poland where he was a member of the Ukrainian Military History Society and the editorial collective of Za derzhavnist’.