claim to have been 'strictly neutral'", and that "the Lithuanians should not have been surprised when, at the end of August, Warsaw refused to recognize Kaunas's neutrality". In late August, Lithuanian and Polish missions met in Kaunas to negotiate the situation. While the talks were underway, Polish troops retook Sejny, Augustów, and Suwałki in the south. The Suwałki Region held great symbolic importance for the Lithuanians as a locus of their independence movement. Lithuania mounted military operations in the area. Poland also wanted to reclaim Vilnius, which it had been forced to abandon during the Soviet offensive in July. The clashes led to a war on a wide front between Poland and Lithuania in September. An intervention was made by the League of Nations, which brokered the Suwałki Agreement on October 7, 1920, which was to have taken effect on October 10. However, on October 9, Polish General Lucjan Żeligowski staged a mutiny, invaded Lithuania and took over Vilnius. Most of the Vilnius and Suwałki Regions would remain under Polish control during the interwar period, and interwar Polish–Lithuanian relations were described as "no war, no peace". Legacy The treaty represented a major breakthrough in Lithuania's quest for international recognition. The provision that permitted the return of Lithuanian World War I refugees and prisoners was a welcomed development. However, the Soviet Union did not pay all its reparations and never seriously considered returning the cultural and historical property. Lithuanian politicians and historians continue to seek the return of those items, but the Russian government claims that they are lost. Modern Belarusian historiography regards the treaty, especially the cession of territories of modern Belarus to Lithuania (primarily Hrodna, Shchuchyn, Lida, Ashmyany, Smarhon, Pastavy, Braslaw but also the contemporary Vilnius Region with Vilna) as a unilateral act by the Soviet authorities that disregarded the national interests of the Belarusian people and was aimed at immediate military and political gains. Some historians have asserted that if Poland had not prevailed in the Polish–Soviet War, Lithuania would have been invaded by the Soviets, and would never have experienced two decades of independence. Despite the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty, Lithuania was very close to being invaded by the Soviets in summer 1920 and being forcibly incorporated into that state, and only the Polish victory derailed this plan. The bilingual treaty was signed in two copies of equal power and the Lithuanian copy, which prior to the 1940