Just one day after the fall of Kyiv, the Central Council of Ukraine signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers, which invited the Imperial German Army to invade Ukraine and oust the Soviets from power. The Red Guards were unable to halt the imperial advance, which within a month forced the Bolsheviks to negotiate their own peace treaty with the Central Powers, ceding control of Ukraine to the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. When the Ukrainian nationalists in Huliaipole began threatening anarchists with reprisals, local anarcho-syndicalists initiated a campaign of "revolutionary terror" against them, assassinating one nationalist leader before being forced to the negotiating table by Nestor Makhno. The nationalists subsequently began planning a coup, threatening pogroms against the local Jewish community in order to bring them on side. On the night of 15–16 April, the Ukrainian nationalists carried out the coup, launching a surprise attack against the anarchist "free battalion" and disarming them, before arresting leading anarcho-communists. The following day, a demonstration managed to secure the release of the arrested anarchists but were unable to organize any armed defense of the town, which was soon occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Army. Before the end of the month, the Ukrainian People's Republic was overthrown by the Central Powers and replaced with the Ukrainian State. Under the rule of Pavlo Skoropadskyi, the new regime began returning land to the nobility and requisitioning grain from the peasantry, which fomented popular discontent that ignited the Ukrainian War of Independence. At a conference in Taganrog, anarchist insurgents regrouped and agreed to return to Huliaipole in July 1918, in order to carry out an insurrection against the occupation forces. By the time they returned to Ukraine, the country was already in revolt against the Ukrainian State, with hundreds of thousands participating in armed uprisings and rail strikes, even in the face of harsh reprisals by the occupation forces. Peasant bands under various self-appointed otamans now attacked the occupation forces and eventually came to dominate the countryside; some defected to the Directorate or the Bolsheviks, but the largest portion followed either socialist revolutionary Nykyfor Hryhoriv or the anarchist flag of Makhno. On 30 September, insurgent detachments led by Nestor Makhno and Fedir Shchus linked up at and defeated the occupation forces in battle. When the November Revolution brought World War I to an end, the occupation finally began to melt away. In right-bank Ukraine, the Ukrainian State