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Today marks four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Between 1766 and 1944, Germans lived in over 3,000 places within the borders of Ukraine today, in both urban and rural settlements, in the former imperial empires of Austria, Hungary and Russia. These places—whether they still exist today or not, whether their names are the same or not—remain in the hearts of the descendants as one our ancestral homelands.
This is the fourth year I have posted this illustration map, or some variation of it. This year, it shows the frontline of the war as it was yesterday, 23 February 2026. At present in Ukraine, there are over 600 former German settlements in Russian-occupied territory.
The first time I compiled and posted this illustration was a week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. There were many questions and comments about it, both positive and negative. What are all the pins? What do the colors mean? All the Germans are gone, so why does it matter? Up to that point, I had not shown a map of former German colonies focused in a modern country’s borders. The image above seemed to be a revelation to many German descendants, and it was a teachable moment—one of those moments that arise from curiosity that present an opportunity to have a conversation, in this case about the present events and our collective past.
Since then, I carried that moment forward in a class I taught two years later about Germans in Ukraine. The maps below are from that class.
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| German settlements in historical imperial Austrian, Hungarian, and Russian provinces/regions on a modern map of Ukraine. |
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| German settlements in historical Soviet Republics on a modern map. |
Still standing with Ukraine.
Slava Ukraini!
🇺🇦🌻
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