Nazi Germany launched
Operation Barbarossa, its assault on the Soviet Union, on 22 June. That day, leaders of the OUN met in
Kraków in
occupied Poland, and established a Ukrainian National Committee (UNK), as step towards a Ukrainian state. General
Vsevolod Petriv was elected head of the committee
in absentia with
Volodymyr Horbovy chosen as acting leader and
Viktor Andriievsky as second deputy. It sent a memorandum to
Adolf Hitler affirming the Ukrainian people's aspirations for independence, readiness to fight the USSR and hope that Germany would respect Ukrainian sovereignty. On 5 July, the German security police arrested the organizers of the committee, bringing its existence to an end. The Germans occupied
Lviv on 30 June.
Henryk Szyper reported that "German and Ukrainian flags were hung out everywhere" to welcome German troops, and the population "expected that a Ukrainian
state of fascist kind would be established". Many thought that they found a new ally in Nazi Germany. On the first day of the German occupation of the city, one of the wings of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) declared
restoration of the independent Ukrainian state.
Yaroslav Stetsko proclaimed in Lviv the Government of an independent Ukraine that "will work closely with the
National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its leader
Adolf Hitler, which is forming a
new order in Europe and the world" – as stated in the text of the "Act of Proclamation of Ukrainian Statehood". This was done without pre-approval from the Germans. The Declaration of Independence took the German authorities completely by surprise, and they saw it as an attempted coup. During the morning of 30 June, an
ad hoc Ukrainian People's Militia was being formed in the city by the OUN. It included OUN activists who had moved in from
Kraków with the Germans, OUN members who lived in Lviv, and former Soviet policemen who had either decided to switch sides or who were OUN members that had infiltrated the Soviet police. It initiated the
first of two violent pogroms the following day. On 5 July, OUN-B leader Bandera was placed under honorary arrest () in Kraków, and transported to Berlin the next day. On 14 July, he was released, but required to stay in Berlin. On 12 July 1941 he was joined in Berlin by Stetsko, whom the Germans had moved from Lviv after an unsuccessful attempt by unknown persons to assassinate him. Bandera and Stetsko were held in the central Berlin prison at
Spandau from 15 September 1941 until January 1942, when they were transferred to
Sachsenhausen concentration camp's special barrack for high-profile political prisoners, Zellenbau. Some of the Ukrainian nationalists were driven underground, and from that time forward, they fought against the Nazis, while continuing also to fight against Poles and Soviet forces (see
Ukrainian Insurgent Army). Within two years of the declaration, the Germans had imprisoned or killed 80% of the leadership of the OUN-B. Bandera and Stetsko themselves were released in 1944 by the Germans. ==Government structure==