Ukrainian War of Independence - Background

Background

See also: Ukraine after the Russian Revolution and Eastern Front (World War I)

During the First World War Ukraine was in the front lines of the main combatants: the Entente-allied Russian Empire and Romania, and the Central Powers of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. By the start of 1917 – after the Brusilov Offensive – the Imperial Russian Army held a front line which partially reclaimed Volhynia and eastern Galicia.

The February Revolution of 1917 allowed many ethnic groups in the Russian Empire to demand greater autonomy and various degrees of self-determination. A month later, the Ukrainian People's Republic was declared in Kiev as an autonomous entity with close ties to the Russian Provisional Government, and governed by a socialist-dominated Tsentralna Rada ("Central Council"). The weak and ineffective Provisional Government in Petrograd continued its loyalty to the entente and the increasingly unpopular war, launching the Kerensky Offensive in the summer of 1917. This Offensive was a complete disaster for the Russian Army. The German counter-attack caused Russia to lose all their gains of 1916, as well as destroy the morale of its army, which caused the near-complete disintegration of the armed forces and the governing apparatus all over the vast Empire. Many deserting soldiers and officers – particularly ethnic Ukrainians – had lost faith in the future of the Empire, and found the increasingly self-determinant Central Rada a much more favourable alternative. Nestor Makhno began his Anarchist activity in the south of Ukraine by disarming deserting Russian soldiers and officers who crossed the Gaychur River next to Gulyai Pole, while in the east in the industrial Donets Basin there were frequent strikes by Bolshevik-infiltrated trade-unions.