At this moment the growing hostility in the rear of Denikin’s White Russian Army came to a head and this as much as the power of the Soviets forced him to retreat and retire from the scene. Soon there was only the Crimea left in the hands of the White Russians. Yet the damage had already been done. Petlyura and the Ukrainians were not in a position to take over and organize the territory which Denikin had evacuated and it passed back into the hands of the Red forces, so that by the spring of 1920 nearly all of Great Ukraine was in the hands of the Bolsheviks. Petlyura and the remains of his organized forces were pushed on to Polish soil and the general cause seemed lost. Just then Petlyura made an important decision. He signed a treaty of peace with the Polish government which recognized the Direktoria as the government of an independent Ukrainian National Republic. This was the first recognition of Ukraine that had been officially granted since the Conference of Brest-Litovsk and there were high hopes that something might be saved from the wreckage of the last years. The treaty was signed on April 21, 1920 and four days later the Polish army, with what was left of Petlyura’s forces, marched on Kiev. There was little effective opposition and on May 6 a division of the Ukrainian Army and its Polish allies entered the city, almost without a battle. They even occupied a bridgehead on the east bank of the Dnyeper, and it seemed as if it would be possible to begin the work of rebuilding the shattered country. Again there came disappointment. The Polish forces far outnumbered those actually under Ukrainian command. The sight of the Poles in Kiev annoyed and angered many of the more ardent Ukrainians and they blamed Petlyura for his alliance and for his abandonment of Western Ukraine. Memories of the century-long hostility with the Poles were stirred up and the actions of some of the Poles increased the tension. The result was that Petlyura was not able to secure rapidly the support that he had hoped for among the Ukrainian population, especially as Kiev was still filled with Russian refugees and sympathizers, many of whom preferred the Bolsheviks as a government in Moscow to the Ukrainians. At the same time the Polish military situation was none too brilliant. Under the influence of the military tactics of the World War and its elaborate trench systems, little attention was paid to the service of supply behind the lines and the armies at the front were poorly supplied. Liaison between the various armies and divisions was bad and there was a possibility that an energetic attack by the Bolsheviks might jeopardize the situation.