Before it was received Germany declared that Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and parts of Esthonia and Livonia--i.e. the conquered provinces of Russia--had already expressed their "self-determination" in favour of separation from Russia and protection by Germany; and on 2 January Trotzky indignantly denounced these "hypocritical peace proposals." On the 10th, however, he consented to reopen the discussions at Brest without reference to the Entente, and to recognize the independent status of the Ukraine. He was not yet prepared to accept the German terms, and after the forcible suppression of the Constituent Assembly, which had been elected in the autumn and endeavoured to meet at Petrograd on 18 January, he accused the Germans of demanding "a most monstrous annexation." He was still relying on the result of Bolshevik propaganda in Germany, and the strikes which broke out at the end of the month and the prohibition of the Vorwärts showed that it was not without effect. But their suppression by the Government deprived him of his only weapon, and on 10 February he announced that, while the Bolsheviks refused to sign an unjust peace, the state of war was ended between Germany and Russia. This chaotic suggestion did not commend itself to the Germans, and they took prompt measures to bring Trotzky to a less ambiguous frame of mind. On the 18th they occupied Dvinsk and Lutsk, and before the end of the month they were in Hapsal, Dorpat, Reval, Pskov, and Minsk, and within striking distance of Petrograd (see Map, p. 274). On the 24th the Bolsheviks intimated their willingness to accept the new German terms, far more severe than their original proposals, which included the abandonment of the whole of the Baltic Provinces, Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, and the surrender of Armenia and the Caucasus to the Turks. Peace was signed on these conditions on 2 March, and confirmed by a majority of more than two to one at a congress of Soviets at Moscow on the 14th.