Aggressors may artificially create and install fully controlled organs of power in occupied territories. Forming a puppet government allows the aggressor to simulate an internal civil conflict for the initial seizure of governance, and then to rule the region by proxy for long-term institutional consolidation.
The installation of a government fully controlled by Moscow after the destruction of the capital: the election of the new hetman took place in Peter's presence immediately after the execution of the Baturyn officers – "Under the circumstances, the officers simply confirmed Skoropadsky, presented by Peter"[1]. Hrushevsky records the mechanics of dependence: "The hetman's residence was moved from Baturyn to Hlukhiv, right up against the Muscovite border, and two Muscovite regiments were garrisoned there so that the residents could arrest the hetman and the officers at once," and "everyone in Ukraine understood that power lay not with the hetman but with those residents"[2].
The holding of an alternative congress in Kharkiv and the creation of a Moscow-controlled "People's Secretariat" to imitate an internal struggle: it was created "as an alternative to the Ukrainian Central Rada and the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian Central Rada" and "acted in close contact with and under the direct leadership of the highest state and party institutions of Soviet Russia"[3]. The congress declared Ukraine part of Russia. In the resolution on the self-determination of Ukraine, adopted in Kharkiv on 12 (25) December 1917, the congress recognized "the Ukrainian Republic as a federative part of the Russian Republic" and declared "a resolute struggle against the policy of the Central Rada, ruinous for the worker-peasant masses, exposing its bourgeois, counter-revolutionary character"[4]. The congress derived its mandate from the decisions of Petrograd: in the words of the resolution, "the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, proclaimed by the February Revolution, could be brought to life only thanks to the October Revolution, which led to the creation of the Workers' and Peasants' Government — the Council of People's Commissars"[4]. The secretariat's own power came down to another state's decrees: it "announced the overthrow of the UCR and the recognition of only its own decrees as valid. It introduced the decrees of the Council of People's Commissars of Russia in Ukraine"[3][5]. Moscow kept its man inside the government as well: Serhii Bakynskyi, people's secretary for inter-national affairs, was simultaneously "the representative of the CPC of Russia"[3]. Historian Stanislav Kulchytsky describes the direct oversight: "since a Ukrainian party center did not exist, Lenin placed a temporary extraordinary commissar over the Kharkiv government" - Georgii Ordzhonikidze, an official of the central party apparatus[6]. The journal of the Istpart of the CP(b)U "Letopis revoliutsii" wrote in 1924: "The All-Ukrainian government was a center without a periphery, a staff without an army, when it had neither territory, nor a population subordinate to it, nor an armed force"[7].
On 28 November 1918 the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party (the CC RCP(b)) created in the Russian city of Kursk a puppet government for Ukraine, which named itself the "Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine" - political cover for the invasion by the troops of Soviet Russia into Ukraine. By a manifesto of 29 November it proclaimed the establishment of Soviet power in Ukraine, and on 29 January 1919 it was reorganized into the Council of People's Commissars of the UkrSSR on the Russian model[8]. By a decree of 3 December 1918 - a month before the capture of Kharkiv - this government set up its own secret police: the All-Ukrainian Extraordinary Commission[9].
In the summer of 1919 Moscow took even the punitive apparatus away from the front it had created. On 11 June 1919 Shishkov, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian secret police, telegraphed the CC RCP(b) that it had no organizational ties whatsoever with the Russian one and that all local commissions in Ukraine were subordinate only to the Ukrainian, not the Moscow one[10]. On 22 July 1919 Dzerzhinsky, head of the Russian secret police, wrote to Latsis, head of the Ukrainian one, that the Ukrainian commission's business was to carry out in Ukraine the policy of the party's Moscow centre: "in relation to us You have become a samostiynik, become one objectively," and its task was "to be the conductor of the policy of the CC RCP [the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party] in Ukraine"[11]. On 13 August 1919 the politburo of the CC RCP(b) resolved to dissolve the Ukrainian secret police, merging it with the Russian one, and charged Peters with the execution; on 14 August the politburo of the party's Ukrainian branch (the CC CP(b)U) submitted, and on 16 August Peters was appointed representative of the Russian commission attached to the colonial administration of Ukraine (the UkrSSR)[12].
In 1919 General Denikin refused to recognize the Mountain government and dissolved it[13]; General Lyakhov, appointed ruler of the Terek oblast, agreed to regard the republic's parliament as no more than "a consultative organ attached to his person"[14]. As ruler of Chechnya the Volunteer Army appointed a general from among the Chechens - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "As Ruler of Chechnya on behalf of the Volunteer Army was appointed a well-known military man - General Eriskhan (Iriskhan) Aliev, a Chechen by origin"[14]. On 29 March 1919 Denikin convened a conference in Grozny - as the same historians write, one "called upon to put an end to the bloodshed and to confirm E. Aliev as ruler of Chechnya" - attended by representatives of 42 villages, mostly supporters of the Atagi Soviet (the Chechen National Council, which sat in Starye Atagi), entrepreneurs and part of the clergy[14].
The installation of a controlled administration under military cover: the decisions of the Crimean parliament were taken in conditions where "behind the backs of Crimea's self-defense forces, our servicemen, of course, stood"[15]. The UN General Assembly declared the ensuing referendum void and confirmed that it "was not authorized by Ukraine"[16]. OHCHR recorded the "election" scene itself: overnight into 27 February "armed groups without insignia took over the buildings of the local government and parliament," and "on 27 February, members of the Parliament of Crimea, in the presence of gunmen, dismissed the local Government and elected Sergey Aksenov as the Head of Crimea"[17].