Polish advance The Polish advantage on the southern Ukrainian front caused a quick defeat of the Soviet armies and their displacement past the Dnieper River.
Zhytomyr was captured on 26 April. Lieutenant
Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski was among the Polish cavalry men recognized for valour. Planes of the
Polish Air Force caused panic in the enemy ranks. In a 26 April letter to Prime Minister Leopold Skulski, Piłsudski characterized the Bolshevik formations as "almost incapable of any resistance", strongly impressed by the extraordinary speed of Polish moves. Contrary to the Polish expectations, many towns had been taken without any opposition from the Red Army, whose units were quickly withdrawn by their commanders. Within a week, the Soviet 12th Army had become disorganized. The Polish 6th Army and Petliura's forces pushed the Soviet 14th Army out of central Ukraine as they quickly marched eastward through
Vinnytsia. In Vinnytsia, from 13 May, Petliura organized his government and prepared further offensive in the direction of
Odessa. The Soviet 12th Army evacuated from Kiev on 6 May. "Those beasts", wrote Piłsudski to General Sosnkowski on 6 May, "instead of defending Kiev, flee from there". The Polish offensive stopped at Kiev and the front was formed along the Dnieper. The combined Polish-Ukrainian forces under General Rydz-Śmigły entered the city on 7 May. A bridgehead was established and reached 15 kilometers east of the Dnieper, which was as far as the Polish 3rd Army advanced. About 20,000 Red Army troops had been taken prisoner by 2 May. Only 150 Polish soldiers died during the entire operation. On 9 May, the Polish and Ukrainian troops celebrated the capture of Kiev with the
victory parade on
Khreshchatyk, the city's main street. Control over Kiev was given to the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Ukrainian
6th Division was garrisoned there. However, the military achievement turned out to be incomplete, as the Bolshevik armies, contrary to Polish objectives, avoided decisive confrontations and had not been destroyed. While the Polish forces had been drawn deeply into the Ukrainian territory, the Soviets could not be made to participate in forced negotiations, as the Polish side had hoped. The Polish command soon felt compelled to transfer some of its units to the northern Belarusian front. On 1 May, in a letter to his wife, Piłsudski declared a victory:"With the first stage completed, you must now be very surprised and a little scared by these great successes. In the meantime, I prepare for the second phase and arrange the forces and materials so it can be as effective as the first one. So far, I had completely destroyed the entire Bolshevik 12th Army, of which nothing at all had been left ... one feels dizzy thinking of the amount of war materials captured ... I had won this great battle by a daring plan and extraordinary energy put into its execution."The triumphant tone turned out to be premature. The 12th Army, in particular, had been battered but not destroyed, as the marshal was soon to find out. The military and political developments elicited a sharp response in Russia, where Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky appealed to national sentiments and called for total war with expansionist Poland. General
Aleksei Brusilov, former chief commander of the
Russian Empire's Tsarist army and from 2 May chairman of the new Council of Military Experts, appealed to his former officers to re-enlist with the Bolshevik forces and 40,000 of them complied. A large army of volunteers had also been raised and sent to the Western Front; the first units departed Moscow on 6 May. The Soviet leaders considered the Polish attack in Ukraine a stroke of good fortune. They saw Poland as falling into its own trap and expected a military victory for Russia. Moscow had masterfully unleashed psychological warfare in Soviet Russia, Poland, and Europe. A new
Great Patriotic War was declared and Russian society mobilized accordingly. For the Russian and Soviet publicists, the Kiev Expedition had become synonymous with the Polish politics of aggression and political thoughtlessness. The negative image of Poland they had created was exploited by the
Soviet Union in the following years, most importantly in
September 1939 and during
World War II. , Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR, delivers a speech to motivate the troops to fight in the Soviet–Polish war, 1 May 1920 What appeared to be a highly successful military expedition to a city that symbolized the eastern reaches of Polish history (harking back to the
intervention of
Bolesław I the Brave in 1018) caused enormous euphoria in Poland. The Polish Sejm declared the need to establish such "strategic borders" that would make a future war improbable already on 4 May. Piłsudski was lionized by the public and by politicians of different orientations. On 18 May in Warsaw, he was greeted in the Sejm by its Marshal
Wojciech Trąmpczyński, who spoke of a tremendous triumph of Polish arms and said to Piłsudski: "The victories of our army accomplished under your leadership will influence the future in our east". "I left
Warsaw that was intoxicated by the triumph; the nation had lost its sense of reality" – commented
Charles de Gaulle. On 26 April in Zhytomyr, in his "Call to the People of Ukraine", Piłsudski assured that "the Polish Army would only stay as long as necessary until a legal Ukrainian government took control over its own territory". Many Ukrainians were both anti-Polish and anti-Bolshevik, and were suspicious of the advancing Poles. The
Command of the Polish Army Rear in Ukraine had just been established to help with the supply of the Polish Army. From 12 May, a newly established Polish military authority had been engaged in requisitioning goods from the Ukrainian population, giving rise to protests lodged by Ukrainian officials. Among the machinery and products confiscated from Ukraine were thousands of loaded cars, engines and railroad equipment, in violation of the Polish–Ukrainian accords. Because of the changing military situation, such activities had taken place over a limited period of time. The
Soviet propaganda had the effect of encouraging negative Ukrainian sentiment towards the Polish operation and Polish-Ukrainian relations in general. Actions such as punitive military expeditions organized by
Polish land owners against rebellious Ukrainian peasants strengthened the effectiveness of Bolshevik propaganda. The Polish command restricted administrative districts in Ukraine where Petliura's army was allowed to conduct recruitment campaigns. Polish officials claimed that Ukrainian candidates for the military were demoralized, would cause trouble and be of little use. A (small) Ukrainian army was supposed to only symbolize the Polish–Ukrainian alliance; the victory was intended to belong to Poland alone. A strong, victorious Ukrainian army might have demanded revisions in the treaties and reopen border disputes. A modest in size and capabilities UPR, a Poland-dependent "buffer" state, would guarantee loyalty and solidarity with Polish politics. Polish soldiers in Ukraine often acted as an occupation force. According to Polish General
Leon Berbecki, "the orgy of plunder" ... "lasted for several weeks". Piłsudski and other Polish commanders had been instrumental in their treatment of Petliura and the leading Ukrainian officers. The Ukrainian population was tired of hostilities after several years of war. Nationality-conscious Ukrainians often thought of Petliura as the man who
sold out Ukraine to Poland. Efforts to generate Ukrainian popular support for the idea of the country's alliance with Poland had failed. The growth of Petliura's Ukrainian forces was slow: there were about 23,000 soldiers in September 1920. Petliura wanted the Polish forces to remain in Ukraine for the time being, while the UPR engaged in the building of its statehood. Piłsudski had a different solution in mind. He planned to definitely break the Soviet armies and dictate his peace conditions to Red Russia by 10 May. Then the Polish military would begin its evacuation. However, instead of negotiating, the enemy prepared for a counteroffensive. The Polish command knew only that the Southwestern Front forces east of the Dnieper were being systematically reinforced.
Józef Jaklicz, chief-of-staff of the 15th Infantry Division, wrote to his wife on 30 May: "We have overestimated our strength and threw ourselves into politics on a grand scale, with the military engaged, without being properly secured ... The soldiers are cut-off from the world, there is no news or communication." Polish soldiers feared the hostility of Ukrainian rural population.
Soviet counterattack The Polish forces were uniformly and thinly stretched along Poland's eastern front that was 1200 km long. They were reinforced by some
World War I trenches. At some locations, considered strategically important, concentrations of troops were established, but they would be easy to go around. French General
Paul Prosper Henrys, who visited the front, noted the weakness of Polish rear reserves. He suggested that the ratio of
frontline troops to the reserves should be 2:1, not 5:1, as was the case. According to the concept of
Boris Shaposhnikov, chief operations manager on the
Field Staff of the
Revolutionary Military Council, the Soviet leadership decided to concentrate forces in Belarus and launch a counteroffensive from there. The Polish challenge in Ukraine necessitated a Soviet response. Trotsky arrived at
Mogilev to personally motivate Russian troops to avenge the Polish insult. He predicted the Red Army's presence in Warsaw in the near future. On 14 May, Trotsky ordered the Red Army to attack.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky, accomplished in fighting the
Whites, was made commander of the Western Front on 1 May 1920. He wanted to launch an assault on the Belarusian front before Polish troops arrived from the Ukrainian front. On 14 May, Tukhachevsky's so-called
first offensive began. Western Front's 15th and 16th Armies attacked the slightly weaker Polish forces (the combatants had respectively 75,000 and 72,000 combined infantry and cavalry soldiers at their disposal) and penetrated the Polish-held areas to the depth of one hundred kilometers. The transfer of two Polish divisions from the Ukrainian front had to be expedited and the newly formed Polish Reserve Army (32,000 men) was used after 25 May. Because of the energetic Polish counter-offensive led by
Stanisław Szeptycki, Kazimierz Sosnkowski and
Leonard Skierski, by 8 June the Poles had recovered the bulk of the lost territory, Tukhachevsky's armies were withdrawn to the
Avuta and
Berezina Rivers, and the front had remained inactive until July. While Tukhachevsky retained control of the strategic points needed for future offensive action, the Polish high command kept its ineffective system of linear arrangement of forces and weak rear reserves. The Soviet forces south of Polesia were also getting ready for a counterassault. On 5 May,
Felix Dzerzhinsky arrived in Kharkiv and brought with him 1,400
Cheka functionaries, charged with improving discipline in Red Army units. The plan for the counteroffensive in the south was approved during a 15 May conference in which
Sergey Kamenev also participated. Because the 12th and the 14th Armies of the Southwestern Front still did not have sufficient resources to launch an attack, the participants decided to wait for the arrival of the
1st Cavalry Army under
Semyon Budyonny, which was on its way (from 10 March) to the Polish–Soviet combat area. The 1st Cavalry Army, a highly regarded formation credited with the destruction of the "White" Volunteer Army, was assigned by Kamenev and Dzerzhinsky the leading role in attacking the Polish armies in Ukraine. On 1 May, the 1st Cavalry Army was over 40,000 men (and women) strong, but only 18,000 of its soldiers were brought to bear on the Polish front. To better prepare for the expected Soviet counteroffensive, the Ukrainian Front, a new Polish formation, was established on 28 May. It comprised 57,000 soldiers and was charged with holding onto the territory that Polish forces had acquired. Polish (and Allied) commanders held Soviet cavalry in low regard. To Piłsudski, Budyonny's horse people were like bands of nomads or swarms of locusts (a reference to their propensity to wreak havoc on civilian communities encountered), incapable of executing any effective cavalry
charge. Alexander Yegorov, commander of the Russian Southwestern Front, having received considerable reinforcements, initiated on 28 May an assault maneuver in the Kiev area. Besides the Soviet main armies, the special formations of
Iona Yakir and of
Filipp Golikov, in addition to the 1st Cavalry Army, became especially important in attacks on the Polish positions. The 1st Cavalry Army was supposed to penetrate the Polish formations and get to their rear, while the Russian 12th and 14th Armies would complete the frontal destruction. After a week of storming the Polish defenses, on 5 June the 1st Cavalry Army forced its way between the Polish 3rd and 6th Armies. It infiltrated and disorganized the rear infrastructure of Polish lines, eliminated many smaller units, and caused extensive destruction. Rydz-Śmigły proceeded to fortify Kiev, which he intended to defend. He refused to obey the order from the Ukrainian Front commander
Antoni Listowski to withdraw in a timely manner. He demanded a written order from Piłsudski, which he received on 10 June. The Polish Army evacuation, accomplished over the next few days, was preceded by the destruction of the city's bridges, electric power stations, and water pumps on the Dnieper.
Polish retreat {{multiple image After 10 June, Rydz-Śmigły evacuated the 3rd Polish Army from Kiev. The Soviets were back, which was, supposedly, the 16th regime change in Kiev since the beginning of the
Russian Revolution. For the next two months, while fighting the Soviets, the Polish armies kept retreating toward the west. To break the encirclement, Rydz-Śmigły's 3rd Army rapidly withdrew in that direction. It took considerable military experience and ingenuity to maneuver the army, the trains of wagons full of war spoils, and fleeing civilians, out of immediate danger. The army experienced losses in life and equipment, but broke out of the entrapment by 16 June. However, contrary to Piłsudski's expectations, it was unable to launch successful counterattacks. In the following weeks, the 2nd and 3rd Armies fought the Bolshevik forces on many occasions. Initially, the strength of their resistance and determination surprised Budyonny and his commanders. On 26 June, Rydz-Śmigły replaced Listowski as commander of the Ukrainian Front, but the Polish armies kept retreating and suffering losses. As they had lost their strategic initiative, the morale of the Polish and Ukrainian soldiers deteriorated and with time their units had become more inclined to surrender. Despite the strength of the Polish artillery formations, the officer corps in particular was subjected to heavy losses, in part due to the continued attempts to launch counterattacks. The
Polish 7th Air Escadrille, known also as the
Kościuszko Squadron, manned largely by American pilots, was particularly helpful. In late May and early June, they flew many bombing and reconnaissance missions. They slowed the Soviet counteroffensive and the commandant of the Polish 13th Infantry Division commented: "Without the American pilots we would have been long gone". Their machine gun attacks held back the progress of Budyonny's cavalry. The squadron's leading pilot,
Merian C. Cooper, was shot down and imprisoned by the Russians, but escaped after two months. After the 16 to 18 August intense
fighting in the Lviv area, the fourteen planes of the squadron were credited again with stopping Budyonny and saving the situation. The Polish 3rd Army withdrew to the
Styr River line, the 6th Army to the Zbruch River. On 5 July, Brigadier
Marian Kukiel wrote: "In the afternoon, we were hit by the unexpected order to retreat to the Zbruch. Depressing news announcing a lost war, or at least a lost campaign". volunteer pilots,
Merian C. Cooper and
Cedric Fauntleroy, fought in the
Kościuszko Squadron of the
Polish Air Force On 19 July, the Poles engaged a substantial Soviet force and fought the enemy for two weeks, which culminated in the Battle of
Brody and
Berestechko (29 July–3 August). The offensive battle was terminated by Piłsudski, who withdrew two Polish divisions and sent them north, one to strengthen the force concentration at the
Wieprz River and one to
defend Warsaw. The town of Brody was kept by the Polish forces. Budyonny complained of his Cossacks being stretched to their limits and exhausted, lacking food and feed for the horses, who were too tired to fend off flies. Ultimately, the Polish armies were forced to withdraw to their initial positions. The Russian forces also remained in western Ukraine and become involved in heavy fighting for the area of the city of Lviv, which had been under 1st Cavalry Army's siege from 12 August. The Kiev Expedition ended with a loss of all the territories gained by the Poles and their Ukrainian allies in the course of the campaign, and also of Volhynia and parts of Eastern Galicia. However, the retreating Polish forces avoided destruction by the Soviet armies. ==Aftermath==