his resumption of power in 1926 as similarly focusing on the Polonization of the country's Eastern Slavic minorities and on the centralization of power. While some scholars accept at face value the democratic principles claimed by Piłsudski for his federative plan, others view such claims with skepticism, pointing out a coup d'état in 1926 when Piłsudski assumed nearly dictatorial powers. In particular, his project is viewed unfavorably by most Ukrainian historians, with Oleksandr Derhachov arguing that the federation would have created a greater Poland in which the interests of non-Poles, especially Ukrainians, would have received short shrift. Some historians hold that Piłsudski, who argued that "There can be no independent Poland without an independent Ukraine", may have been more interested in splitting Ukraine from Russia than in assuring Ukrainians' welfare. He did not hesitate to use military force to expand Poland's borders to Galicia and Volhynia, crushing a Ukrainian attempt at self-determination in disputed territories east of the Bug River which contained a substantial Polish presence (a Polish majority mainly in cities such as Lwów, surrounded by a rural Ukrainian majority). Speaking of Poland's future frontiers, Piłsudski said: "All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente—on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany", while in the east "there are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far". In the eastern chaos, the Polish forces set out to expand as far as feasible. On the other hand, Poland had no interest in joining the western intervention in the Russian Civil War or in conquering Russia itself. Failure In the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War (1919–1921), and the establishment of the Ukrainian SSR, Piłsudski's concept of a federation of Central and Eastern European countries, based on a Polish-Ukrainian axis, lost any chance of realization. Piłsudski next contemplated a federation or alliance with the Baltic and Balkan states. This plan envisioned a Central European union including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece—thus stretching not only west-east from the Baltic to the Black Sea, but north-south from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. This project also failed: Poland was distrusted by Czechoslovakia and Lithuania; and while it had relatively good relations with the other countries, they had tensions with their neighbors, making it virtually impossible to create in Central Europe a