Ukrainian–Russian armistice

On 12 June 1918 in Kiev, at a closed plenary session of the peace conference, the delegations of the Hetman’s Ukrainian State and of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic signed an agreement that was to remain in force until peace was concluded. Its first point was the most important: for the whole duration of the negotiations both sides suspended military operations along the entire length of the front. The armistice concluded a month earlier at Korenevo had covered only a section of the border in the Kursk region; now the halt in fighting extended to the whole front. Ukrainian historiography calls this document a preliminary peace treaty, while the British chronology of the war records it as an armistice between Bolshevik Russia and the whole Ukrainian state.

Two delegations

The negotiations had been going on since 23 May in the building of the Pedagogical Museum, where the Central Rada had previously sat. Soviet Russia was represented by Christian Rakovsky and Dmitry Manuilsky, and Ukraine by a delegation headed by the Judge General Serhiy Shelukhin, with Ihor Kistiakivsky as his deputy. Shelukhin made sure that the talks were conducted in Ukrainian, and the agreement was drawn up in two languages, Ukrainian and Russian. Its preamble spoke of negotiations “between two independent states”, which was of particular importance to the Ukrainian side.

Russia had been forced to the negotiating table by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which it undertook to make peace with Ukraine and recognise its agreements with the Central Powers. Rakovsky made no secret of what he really wanted. As early as 2 May he had written to Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko that the Ukrainian question had to be “liquidated, at least temporarily, pending more favourable historical circumstances”.

What the agreement contained

Besides the halt in fighting, the agreement provided that each side would allow citizens of the other state to return home. Former prisoners of war and women and children left without care had priority, and the passage of prisoners was to be facilitated by the Russian and Ukrainian Red Cross. Railway traffic was to be resumed, and Russia undertook to return to Ukraine without delay part of the rolling stock it had taken east during the spring retreat. The parties were to open consulates in each other’s countries, restore postal and telegraph communication and speed up the resumption of trade. The last point announced the immediate opening of talks on a proper peace treaty.

The agreement quickly had practical effects. On 22 June the Ukrainian government decided to open consulates general in Moscow and Petrograd and several dozen consular agencies in other Russian cities, and Soviet Russia opened consulates in Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa.

The border dispute

The most difficult question remained unresolved. The Ukrainian delegation demanded a border drawn according to the extent of the Ukrainian population, including parts of the Kursk and Voronezh governorates as well, and on the Crimea declared that Russia had lost all rights to it. The Russians regarded these demands as annexationist and drew out the negotiations, counting on the defeat of Germany, which was the only guarantee of the independence of the Hetman’s Ukraine. The talks dragged on through the whole summer, and at the beginning of October the Soviet side broke them off. Neither a peace between the two states nor an agreed border was ever concluded.