in the campaign “Soviet-Ukrainian War: Second Invasion and Resource Depletion (1919)”
The refusal of the White commanders to recognize Ukrainian statehood. General Denikin, as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of South Russia, signed the programmatic address "To the Population of Little Russia" (August 1919), which declared the struggle for a Ukrainian state to be treason. Symon Petliura (head of the Directory of the Ukrainian People's Republic and chief otaman of its army) and his associates, the address ran, "having begun the dismemberment of Russia, continue even now their evil work of creating an independent 'Ukrainian State' and of fighting against the rebirth of a United Russia"[1]. Denikin wrote in the first person: "declaring Russian the state language throughout the whole expanse of Russia, I consider entirely inadmissible and prohibit the persecution of the Little Russian folk language"[1]. The promised "prohibition of persecution" did not recognize the language but assigned it the place of a vernacular. What remained for Ukrainian under the address were everyday life, private schools, and the first years of primary school - Denikin explained: "to ease the pupils' assimilation of the first rudiments of knowledge"; the "treasonous movement" for statehood he required to be "completely distinguished" from the permitted "love for the native region… and its local folk language"[1]. Denikin allowed the people's existence and denied it political subjecthood: the striving for an independent Ukrainian state was declared treason, the language was left a vernacular. On the night of September 1, 1919, after four hours of negotiations, the Galician general Kravs and Denikin's general Bredov (according to the diary of the Supreme Command of the Ukrainian Galician Army - the commander of the Guards corps) agreed: the Galician units would withdraw from the city that same day "at least beyond the line of the Kyiv railway stations", then to the line Ihnativka - Vasylkiv - Hermanivka, while the Galician army guarantees that it "will make no moves against the army of the volunteers [Denikin's Volunteer Army]"[2]. In the fourth point the Galician command renounced political subjecthood: "The commander of the Kyiv group of the Galician army declares that the Galician army operates independently of Petliura's army under separate Galician command, without any political aims, and solely with the purpose of fighting the Bolsheviks"[2]. A day earlier, on August 30, at negotiations with the command of Denikin's 2nd brigade, its representatives demanded that the territory southeast and east of the Koziatyn - Fastiv - Kyiv railway be treated as "the operational zone of Denikin's troops", and that the strip between the line Fastiv - Volodarka - Saskiv - Buky and the line Bila Tserkva - Tarashcha - Lysivka - Zvenyhorodka be declared neutral; the diary records: "We did not agree to this demand"[2].