Provisional Government pledged to continue fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front. The Allied Powers had been shipping supplies to Russia since the beginning of the war in 1914 through the ports of Arkhangelsk, Murmansk (established in 1915), and Vladivostok. In April 1917 the United States entered the war on the Allied side. US President Woodrow Wilson dropped his reservations about joining the war with the despotic tsar as an ally, and the United States began providing economic and technical support to Kerensky's government. The war became increasingly unpopular with the Russian populace. Political and social unrest grew, with the Marxist antiwar Bolshevik Party, under Vladimir Lenin, increasing its support. Large numbers of common soldiers either mutinied or deserted from the Imperial Russian Army. The Kerensky Offensive started on , but a German and Austro-Hungarian counterattack defeated the Russian forces. This led to the collapse of the Eastern Front. The demoralised Russian Army stood on the verge of mutiny and most soldiers had deserted the front lines. Kerensky replaced Aleksei Brusilov with Lavr Kornilov as Commander-in-Chief of the Army (19 July 1917). Kornilov attempted to set up a military dictatorship by staging a coup (). He had the support of the British military attaché in Petrograd, Brigadier-General Alfred Knox, and Kerensky accused Knox of producing pro-Kornilov propaganda. Kerensky also claimed that Lord Milner, member of the British War Cabinet, wrote him a letter expressing support for Kornilov. A British armoured-car squadron commanded by Oliver Locker-Lampson and dressed in Russian uniforms participated in the failed coup. The October Revolution of led to the overthrow of Kerensky's provisional government and to the Bolsheviks assuming power. According to William Henry Chamberlin, "A few weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution, on December 23, 1917, an Anglo-French convention had been concluded in Paris, regulating the future operations of British and French forces on Russian territory. This convention defined as a British 'zone of influence' the Cossack regions, the territory of the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia and Kurdistan, while the French zone was to consist of Bessarabia, Ukraina and Crimea. There was a certain economic background for this convention; British investment predominated in the Caucasian oil-fields, while the French were more interested in the coal and iron mines of Ukraina." Russia exits the war In early 1918 forces of the Central Powers invaded Russia, occupying extensive territory and threatening to capture Moscow and to impose pliant regimes. Lenin