In the village of Zadvirya in the Zolochiv district, the memory of the fallen Polish soldiers was honored.
On August 17, 1920, near the village of Zadvirya (now Zolochiv district of Lviv region), one of the most famous battles of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 took place, later referred to as the ‘Polish Thermopylae’.
In this battle, several hundred Polish volunteers, mainly young men from Lviv known as the ‘Lviv Eaglets’, under the command of Captain Boleslaw Zayontskowsky, thwarted the advance of Semyon Budyonny’s First Cavalry Army. Their heroic resistance managed to delay the Bolshevik advance on Lviv.
Out of 330 soldiers who participated in the battle, 318 were killed. Some of the fallen are buried in a mass grave in Zadvirya itself, others at the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, at the Eaglets’ Military Cemetery.
As part of the commemoration of the 105th anniversary of this event, memorial ceremonies took place in Zadvirya on August 16. Representatives of Poland and Ukraine arrived at the mound erected at the battle site.
Among them were the Consul General of the Republic of Poland in Lviv, Marek Radziwon, Defense Attaché of the Polish Embassy in Kyiv, Dariusz Słota, and Deputy Head of the Lviv Regional State Administration, Khrystyna Zamula.
Participants attended a Holy Mass, laid flowers at the monument to the fallen soldiers, and jointly performed the national anthems of Poland and Ukraine.
The organizer of the event was the Polish Society for the Protection of Military Graves in Lviv in cooperation with the General Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Lviv.