Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin (; 16 December 1901 – 15 April 1944) was a Soviet military commander during World War II who was responsible for many Red Army operations in Ukraine as the commander of the Southwestern Front, and of the Voronezh Front during the Battle of Kursk. During the Soviet offensive to retake right-bank Ukraine, Vatutin led the 1st Ukrainian Front, which was responsible for the Red Army's offensives to the west and the southwest of Kiev and the eventual liberation of the city. He was ambushed and mortally wounded in February 1944 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Early life Vatutin was born in Chepukhino village in the Valuysky Uyezd, Voronezh Governorate (now Vatutino, Belgorod Oblast), into a peasant family of Russian ethnicity. Pre-war military service Commissioned in 1920 to the Red Army, he fought against the Ukrainian peasant partisans of the anarchist Nestor Makhno. The following year, he became a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and served diligently in junior command positions. From 1926, he spent the next decade alternating service with studies in the elite Frunze Military Academy and the General Staff Academy. The 1937–1938 purge of Red Army commanders opened the road to his promotion. In 1938, he received the rank of Komdiv, and he was appointed Chief of Staff of the important Kiev Special Military District. Throughout that period, Vatutin combined military service with intensive party activities. In 1939, Vatutin planned operations for the Soviet invasion of Poland in conjunction with the German invasion. He served as Chief of Staff of the Red Army Southern Group. In 1940, under the command of Georgy Zhukov, that group seized Bessarabia from Romania. As a reward for the non-combat campaigns, Joseph Stalin promoted him to the rank of lieutenant general and appointed him to the critical post of Chief of the Operational Directorate of the General Staff. Vatutin was, however, not up to his new appointment. While innovative and hard-working, he lacked any combat experience, and his knowledge of operational art and strategy was too abstract. Still, his peasant roots, relative youthful age and party zeal made him one of Stalin's few favorites in the Soviet military. Vatutin, together with the rest of the Red Army high command, failed to prepare the army for the German attack of 22 June 1941. On 30 June 1941, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the North-Western Front, which enabled