by the Romanian Army on the way there. The Governorate was also set to welcome the entire Ukrainian and Lipovan population of Bessarabia, in exchange for any Romanian-speakers on that side. Antonescu and his favorite demographer, Sabin Manuilă, viewed the Dniester as a defensible frontier, but agreed to relinquish northern Hotin and Cernăuți counties to a Ukrainian state, in exchange for Pokuttya. Ukrainian culture was still banned under Antonescu, and its advocates were forced to assimilate or be marginalized. Under the Antonescu regime, pro-Soviet resistance was mounted by the Komsomol, which attempted sabotage and assassination. Several were shot in retaliation during 1941–1942—including a participant in the 1919 revolt—and 148 were imprisoned. In August 1944, Bessarabia was retaken by the Soviets, and the 1940 borders restored. However, northern Hotin remained an irredenta of the Moldavian SSR, with republican leader Nikita Salogor suggesting its reincorporation in 1946. From late 1944, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought against the Soviets, formed a partisan unit in Khotyn, under Dmytro "Pavlenko" Kozmenko. The period also witnessed the emergence of an anti-communist partisan movement in the Moldavian SSR, with collaboration between Moldovans (or Romanians) and the UPA at Medveja, just south of the demarcation line. In 1944, the People's Commissariat for State Security reported neutralizing pockets of resistance maintained by the far-right National Christian Party outside Tîrnova and Ocnița. In 1945, UPA partisan Oleksandr Sokoliansky raided Zarozhany and managed to kill the two Soviet officers managing intelligence work in Khotyn Raion. The group Arcașii lui Ștefan, active south of the Moldavian–Ukrainian border, attempted to establish contacts with both the UPA and anti-communist partisans in Romania, before being liquidated by the Soviets in 1947–1949. Subversive actions were still carried out to 1949 by partisan commander Ivan Menzak, who attempted to use Khotyn as a base for reestablishing a UPA presence in Right-bank Ukraine. Legacy Suveică notes that Romanian and Western European perspectives on the Khotyn Uprising converge on the claim that it was at most a peasants' revolt, and that it could never canvass for support outside its ethnic Ukrainian base. As argued by Romanian historian Gheorghe I. Brătianu: "not one uprising took place in Bessarabia that was not directly organized and supervised by communist partisans sent in from areas across the Dniester. An attack of some importance took place in late December 1918 and created troubles among the Ruthenian population in Hotin county; Romanian general