Many Ukrainians, who had nothing to do with earlier massacres against the Poles, seeking to defend themselves against communists, joined UPA after the war on both the Soviet and Polish sides of the border. Local agreements between the UPA and the Polish post-AK units began to appear as early as April/May 1945 and in some places lasted until 1947, such as in the Lublin region. One of the most notable joint actions of UPA and the post-AK Freedom and Independence (WiN) organization took place in May 1946, when the two partisan formations coordinated their attack and took over of the city of Hrubieszów. The cooperation between UPA and the post-AK underground came about partly as a response to increasing communist terror and the deportations of Ukrainians to the Soviet Union, and Poles into the new socialist Poland. According to official statistics, between 1944 and 1956 around 488,000 Ukrainians and 789,000 Poles were transferred. On the territories of present-day Poland, 8–12 thousand Ukrainians were killed and 6–8 thousand Poles, between 1943 and 1947. However, unlike in Volhynia, most of the casualties occurred after 1944 and involved UPA soldiers and Ukrainian civilians on one side, and members of the Polish communist security services (UB) and border forces (WOP). Out of the 2,200 Poles who died in the fighting between 1945 and 1948, only a few hundred were civilians, with the remainder being functionaries or soldiers of the Communist regime in Poland. Soviet Union German occupation The total number of local Soviet Partisans acting in Western Ukraine was never high, due to the region enduring only two years of German rule (in some places even less). In 1943, the Soviet partisan leader Sydir Kovpak was sent to the Carpathian Mountains, with help from Nikita Khrushchev. He described his mission to western Ukraine in his book Vid Putivlia do Karpat (From Putivl to the Carpathian Mountains). Well armed by supplies delivered to secret airfields, he formed a group consisting of several thousand men which moved deep into the Carpathians. Attacks by the German air force and military forced Kovpak to break up his force into smaller units in 1944; these groups were attacked by UPA units on their way back. Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov was captured and executed by UPA members after unwittingly entering their camp while wearing a Wehrmacht officer uniform. Fighting As the Red Army approached Galicia, the UPA avoided clashes