numerical superiority of the Red Army, the Soviets gained an advantage over the forces of Krasnov. Nevertheless, in December 1918 the Cossacks managed to surround Tsaritsyn again. In January 1919, battles around the city were fought again with varying outcomes. Thanks to the shifting of forces from the north, the numerical advantage of the Reds was constantly growing, and the morale of the White Cossacks was falling, with some of them going over to the side of the Bolsheviks or abandoning the army entirely. At the beginning of 1919, the Red Southern Front numbered 117,000 soldiers, 2,040 machine guns and 460 cannons, which was one fourth of the entire Red Army. On the other side, Krasnov still commanded a force of 50,000 soldiers in November 1918, but in February 1919 only 15,000 Cossacks remained with him. On 26 December 1918, Voroshilov was replaced as commander of the 10th Army by Alexander Yegorov, a former tsarist officer. and one of the most talented Red commanders during the civil war. At the end of January 1919, the position of commander of the Southern Front was taken by Vladimir Gittis. Under his command, until the end of April this year, the forces of the Southern Front (mainly the 8th, 9th and 13th Red Armies and the 2nd Ukrainian Soviet Army) carried out an offensive that ended with a rebound at Rostov and reaching the line between the Sal and Manych, with the prospect of marching on towards Bataysk and Tikhoretsk. After the departure of the Austro-Hungarian Army from Ukraine and attacks by the Red forces, the defeats of the Don Cossacks near Tsaritsyn forced them to subordinate to the command of the Volunteer Army. On 19 February 1919, Pyotr Krasnov took command, handing it over to Afrikan Bogaewsky and agreeing that the Don, Terek and Kuban Cossacks would join with the Volunteer Army to become part of the Armed Forces of South Russia. Whites capture Tsaritsyn (June 1919) By the summer of 1919, supplies of arms and ammunition delivered to the Whites in Novorossiysk by the Allies bolstered White military power, while another Cossack uprising had broken out on the Don in response to the De-Cossackization campaign. Red army commanders on the Southern Front, apart from Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Alexander Yegorov, turned out to be incompetent. In May-June 1919, the Whites won a series of victories in eastern Ukraine, displacing the Soviet forces