Lt. Gen. Borys Rostyslavovich Khreshchatytskyi
Lt. Gen. Borys Rostyslavovich Khreshchatytskyi (also seen as Boris Hreschatitsky in the West) born in 1881 in the village of Novomykolaivska in the Don, in 1900, he graduated from the Oleksandrovsky Cadet Corps and the Page Corps then went on to fight in the Russo-Japanese War with the Life Guard Cossacks Regiment. When the Great War started, he was a colonel in command of the 52nd Don Cossack Regiment, a mobilised reserve unit. Earning the St. George cross during the Great Retreats in the summer of 1915, by 1916 he was a brigadier general in the 1st Don Divison. Between the Kornilov affair and the Bolshevik Revolution in Sept. 1917, he was made commander of the newly-forming Ussuri Cossack Division and sent to the Far East, arriving in Harbin soon after where he also wore the cap of the chief of staff of Russian troops guarding the China-Eastern Railway. Now if a Don Cossack officer recruiting in outer Manchuria sounds odd, keep in mind he was sent to the “Zelényy Klyn” or “Green Wedge” so-named because it was chiefly popultaed from among the 300,000 Ukrainian peasants shipped to the region in the late 19th Century to displace Manchurians with the Tsar’s blessing in return for land allotments. Once the Whites were on the move in Siberia in the summer of 1918 and Allied Interventionists were landing at Vladivostok, created the Army of the Green Wedge (also seen as the Far Eastern Ukrainian Army) with his Ussuri Cossack Division at its center. Fighting under a Ukrainian flag, they were part of Semenov’s overall command and were in turn well-equipped by the Japanese. With the general defeat of even Semenov’s forces in late 1920, Khreshchatytskyi’s regiments were disbanded and slipped back to Harbin where they enjoyed a decent exile. Emigraiting to France in 1924, he was one of the founding officers of the 1er Régiment Étranger de Cavalerie, 1er REC) earning the Legion of Honor for fighting in Syria and North Africa, and becoming a French citizen in 1933. Returing to the French colors in 1939 with an eye towards forming White Russian units to fight the Bosche, he passed away at age 59 while on service in Tunisia in 1940 and is buried there at Sousse on the shores of the Mediterranean. He is seen as a Ukrainian hero in that country to this day.