From July 1944 it was occupied by the Soviets again and in 1945 it was annexed by the Soviet Union. It became a part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1944. As a result of the actions of both the Ukrainian nationalists of the UPA and the Soviets, almost all Poles left the city in 1944–1946. In 1951 the town was renamed "Nesterov" after the World War I aviator Pyotr Nesterov who became the first to perform aerial ramming in the history of aviation near Zhovkva in 1914. The name Zhovkva, which is the Ukrainian version of the historic Polish name, was restored in 1992, after Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union.