observation of Romanian activities in Hotin County. Its Directorate heard reports according to which "all peasant, provincial, county and even district congresses" supported the notion that Khotyn belonged in a Greater Ukraine. UNR sources describe late 1918 as marked by a "terror policy", including "shootings of mostly innocent people, the torture of women, children and the elderly, looting, bullying and violence against women [and] a broad system of denunciation". Ukrainian peasants on the Romanian side of the border were additionally troubled by the newly adopted land reform legislation, which returned some land to owners that local soviets had dispossessed, and made other plots subject to ransom. Reports by UNR Podolian officials noted that by December "gangs of Moldovans", assisted by the Ukrainians of Stara Ushytsia, made random attacks on Romanian border guards across the Dniester. Following one such killing, Romanian artillery shelled Stara Ushytsia on December 24. UNR officials initially agreed with Davidoglu that these were "bandit" raids. They became reluctant when Romanians presented them with an ultimatum to hand in those responsible, and were further alienated when Romanian troops beat up an UNR border guard at Zhvanets. However, on January 5, they refused to acknowledge an appeal by the "Bessarabian National Union", which asked for intervention in support of Hotin County refugees. Instead, Khotyn's inhabitants found support from the Committee for the Salvation of Bessarabia, which reunited Russian nationalists associated with the Whites. With funds received from the Volunteer Army, Polkovnik Zhurari began the training of guerillas at Tiraspol. Unfolding According to Transnistrian academic Piotr Șornikov, Zhurari and his Committee planned for the rebellion to ignite just before the Paris Peace Conference, which was to analyze the issue of Bessarabia and Khotyn. Romanian rule was still consolidating when the armed rebellion began. Scholar Svetlana Suveică notes that the earliest signs of trouble came on the day set for Old-Style Christmas—January 7, 1919. Ukrainian historian Oleksandr Valentynovych Potylchak notes that "the uprising had an international character: both Ukrainians and Moldovans fought in the rebels' ranks." The first attested partisan leader was a Moldovan, known as Gheorghe or Grigore Bărbuță. The representation of ethnicities other than Ukrainians is nevertheless qualified by other authors. Among those whose names were later advanced as "leaders of the revolt", very few were ethnically Romanian or Moldovan. Van Meurs analyzes two lists, respectively provided by V. Lungu and the Moldavian Soviet Encyclopedia, counting 1/8 Romanians or