within Russia or declare national independence. On 21 February 1918, the German army captured Minsk. 21 February, the Belarusian Council passed the First Constituent Charter declaring the council the only legitimate power on the territory of Belarus. Neither the occupying authorities, nor its government in Berlin, however, were interested in the idea of an independent Belarusian state. On 3 March, Germans and Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. On 6 March, the Belarusian Council passed the Second Charter declared the establishment of the Belarusian People's Republic. The Council became the provisional government of Belarus and was renamed the Council of the Belarusian People's Republic. On March 25, 1918, the All-Belarusian Congress proclaimed the independence of the Belarusian National Republic (Bielaruskaja Narodnaja Respublika, abbreviated as BNR). The Government of the BNR left Minsk in December 1918 for the Lithuanian Republic, and in the spring of 1919 went into exile. Territory In its Third Constituent Charter, the following territories were claimed for BNR: Mogilev Governorate (province), as well as Belarusian parts of Minsk Governorate, Grodno Governorate (including Belastok), Vilna Governorate, Vitebsk Governorate, and Smolensk Governorate, and parts of bordering governorates populated by Belarusians, rejecting the then split of the Belarusian lands between Germany and Russia. The areas were claimed because of a Belarusian majority or large minority (as in Grodno and Vilna Governorate), although there were also numbers of Lithuanians, Poles and people speaking mixed varieties of Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish, as well as many Jews, mostly in towns and cities (in some towns they made up a majority). Some of the Jews spoke Russian as their native tongue; others spoke Yiddish. Military There were attempts to create regular armed forces of the newly established Belarusian People's Republic. Belarusian military units started to form within the disorganized Imperial Russian Army already in 1917. According to the historian Oleg Latyszonek, about 11,000 people, mostly volunteers, served in the Army of the Belarusian People's Republic. General Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz supported the Government of the People's Republic and openly positioned his army as a Belarusian national army. The major military action of the Army of the People's Republic was the Slutsk defence action in late 1920. The Council of the BNR, based at that time in Lithuania, sent officers to help organize armed anti-Bolshevik resistance in the town of Slutsk. Foreign relations During its short existence, the government of Belarus established close ties with the Ukrainian