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Updated: June 21, 2025
Being a junction of six roads and a railway station on the curved line from Kolomea to Zaleszczyki, Horodenka is considered to be the most important strategic point along the Dniester-Czernowitz front. It was undoubtedly a severe blow to the Austrians. During the night of May 11, 1915, and the next day they evacuated a front of about eighty-eight miles, and retired south of the Pruth.
The Dukla and Uzsok passes were to be the main objective, as through them lay the straightest roads to Lemberg and Przemysl. The former is crossed by railway from Tokay to Przemysl, and the latter by rail and road from Ungvar to Sambor. A railroad also runs through the Vereczke from Munkacs to Lemberg, and another through Delatyn from Debreczen to Kolomea.
In the Bukowina, however, the Russians gradually pushed on. Slowly but surely they approached once more the Carpathian Mountain passes. The same was true in eastern Galicia. After the fall of Kolomea in the early part of the month, the Russian advance had progressed steadily, even if slowly, in the direction of Stanislau and Lemberg.
Persistent fighting took place on the line of the River Tchertovetz, a tributary of the Pruth, and also in the region of the town of Kuty. Both sides again suffered heavy losses at these points. East of Kolomea the Russians again attacked in massed formations on a front of twenty-five miles.
By July 27, 1917, the Austro-German divisions under General von Boehm-Ermolli had crossed the Jablonica-Horodenka-Zablowow line. Austrian troops on the northern wing were drawing close to the Pruth Plateau below Kolomea. West of Seletyn-Fundul, on the Moldavian Road in the wooded Carpathians, German and Austro-Hungarian troops wrested some heights positions from the still resisting Russians.
The next objective of General Lechitsky's army was Stanislau, about thirty miles farther northwest than Kolomea, on the Czernovitz-Lemberg railway. On July 1, 1916, in the region west of Kolomea, the army of General Lechitsky, after intense fighting, took by storm some strong Austrian positions and captured some 2,000 men.
That front extended to the north of Nadvorna and Kolomea, by Ottynia across to Niczviska on the Dniester, and from there eastward along the river toward Chotin on the Russian frontier of Bessarabia. By the beginning of May, 1915, the spring floods had subsided, when operations became again possible.
Near Sadzadka the Russians with superior forces were successful in penetrating the Austrian positions, who then retreated about five miles to the west, where they formed a new line and repulsed all attacks. Southwest and northwest of Kolomea the Austrians maintained their positions against all Russian efforts.
About the middle of May matters quieted down in the eastern sector; the only fighting of importance consisted of severe artillery combats around Czernowitz and Kolomea. The issue of the conflict hung in the west with Von Mackensen's armies; fighting in the Bukowina at this stage became an unnecessary expenditure of strength and energy.
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