Front presented an immediate danger and was about to launch an attack, but the narrative was not seen as convincing in the West (the Western Front forces were rather weak at that time and had no plans for an offensive). Soviet Russia's arguments turned out to be more persuasive and the image of Poland had suffered. The Soviets came to realize that the Polish side was not interested in an armistice at the end of February. First, they suspected a strike in the north, in the direction of the so-called Smolensk Gateway. Vladimir Lenin ordered strengthening of the Western Front defenses. The Polish attack in the Polesia and Volhynia borderlands on 7 March, led by Władysław Sikorski, as well as other actions, reinforced the Soviet suspicions. Sikorski's offensive separated the Soviet Western and Southwestern Fronts. Additional Red Army troops were brought hurriedly from the Caucasian Front and from elsewhere. However, as the Soviet intelligence informed of concentrations of Polish forces in the south and in the north, the Soviet leaders had been unable to determine where the main Polish offensive was going to take place. Ukrainian involvement The government of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) faced from early 1919 mounting attacks on the territory it claimed. It had lost control over most of Ukraine, which became divided among several disparate powers: Anton Denikin's Whites, the Red Army and pro-Soviet formations, Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurgent Army in the southeast, the Kingdom of Romania in the southwest, Poland, and various bands lacking any political ideology. During the Polish–Ukrainian War, Symon Petliura's UPR forces fought the Polish Army. An armistice was signed by the combatants on 1 September 1919; it foresaw common action against the Bolsheviks. The city of Kiev had undergone numerous changes of government. The Ukrainian People's Republic was established in 1917; a Bolshevik uprising was suppressed in January 1918. The Red Army took Kiev in February, followed by the Army of the German Empire in March; Ukrainian forces retook the city in December. In February 1919, the Red Army regained control. In August, it was taken first by Petliura's men and then by Denikin's army. The Soviets were in control again from December 1919 (the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had its temporary capital in Kharkiv). By the time of the Polish offensive, Petliura's Ukrainian People's Army had been defeated by the Red Army and controlled only a small sliver of