“At the age of 90, Petro Sodol, a significant figure of the Ukrainian diaspora, a historian and an officer of the US armed forces, who devoted his life to the study and popularization of the feat of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, passed away. Volodymyr Vyatrovych, the former head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, announced this on Facebook. The former head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Volodymyr Viatrovych, reported that the researcher’s heart had stopped”, — write on: ua.news
At the age of 90, Petro Sodol, a significant figure of the Ukrainian diaspora, a historian and an officer of the US armed forces, who devoted his life to the study and popularization of the feat of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, passed away.
Volodymyr Vyatrovych, the former head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, announced this on Facebook.
The former head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Volodymyr Vyatrovych reported that the researcher’s heart stopped on December 31, 2025. Sodol became one of the first to bring the historiography of the UPA to a qualitatively new level, combining academic meticulousness with his own military experience as a US Army major.
Petr Sodol’s life journey began on July 4, 1935 in the Ternopil region in the family of a centurion of the UNR Army, with whom he emigrated to the USA in the post-war years. After twenty years of service in the US Army, during which he participated in the Vietnam War and was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, Sodol devoted himself to science and community activities in Plast. His fundamental reference books on the structure and leadership of the UPA, as well as English-language works on the struggle of the insurgents against Hitler and Stalin, have become table books for researchers of the liberation movement around the world.
Thanks to the tireless work of the historian, the biographies of hundreds of underground people, who were previously known only by pseudonyms, were restored, and unique archival materials from Mykola Lebed’s collection were preserved and transferred to Ukraine. Volodymyr Vyatrovych emphasized that Sodol’s scrupulousness and his ability to find the truth in primary sources made it possible to save entire pages of Ukrainian history from oblivion. Unlike the propagandist myths that Russia and the Soviet Union have been spreading for decades about the Ukrainian underground, Sodol’s research was based on real documents and testimonies of participants in the events.
Previously, Angelina Palamar (pseudonym “Orisya”), who was a liaison of the UPA, died at the age of 101.
Maria Volochanska, a former liaison officer of the UPA, died in Kalusha, Prykarpattia. She passed away at the age of 101.
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