5 Hryven Battle of the Korsun–Shevchenkivsky

The Battle of the Korsun–Shevchenkivsky encirclement in January–February 1944 trapped two German corps — roughly 60,000 men — in a pocket near the Dnieper bend. Soviet forces under Konev and Vatutin closed the ring on January 28th; the breakout attempt in mid-February left somewhere between 20,000 and 35,000 German dead, with both sides inflating their figures for propaganda purposes for decades afterward. Ukraine commemorated this engagement in 2014 — a year when the country's relationship with its Soviet military past had become genuinely complicated by events in Crimea and the Donbas.