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].
In December 1917 the Bolsheviks gathered their own congress of soviets in Kharkiv and created a government subordinate to Petrograd, the "People's Secretariat". The goal was to pass off Russia's war against Ukraine as an internal struggle among Ukrainians. The Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine describes it this way: 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 a part of Russia. On 12 (25) December 1917 it adopted a resolution on the self-determination of Ukraine. In it 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 and peasant masses, exposing its bourgeois, counter-revolutionary character"[4]. The congress explained its right to power by the coup in Petrograd and wrote in the resolution: "the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, proclaimed by the February Revolution, could be put into practice only thanks to the October Revolution, which led to the creation of the Worker-Peasant Government — the Council of People's Commissars"[4]. The puppet government in Kharkiv had no laws of its own: it introduced Petrograd's ready-made decrees in Ukraine. The congress itself decided so: "to immediately extend to the territory of the Ukrainian Republic all decrees and orders of the worker-peasant government of the Federation" and "to declare invalid all orders of the Rada that it has issued and will issue"[5]. The entire new "all-Ukrainian" Soviet authority consisted of 40 people chosen by the congress. There were no peasants among them: the congress left 20 seats for a peasant congress that had not yet convened[6]. Among its first decisions the puppet government appealed to the Council of People's Commissars (the government of Soviet Russia) and annulled the reply of the General Secretariat (the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic under the Central Rada) to Petrograd's ultimatum[6]. It explained the purpose of the appeal this way: "to avoid the possibility of a fratricidal war between the working peoples inhabiting Russia"[6]. The Council of People's Commissars had telegraphed this ultimatum to Kyiv earlier, on 4 (17) December[7]. It put four demands to the Rada. Not to break up the common front by recalling Ukrainian units. Not to let Cossack units pass to the Don, to Kaledin (a general, ataman of the Don Cossack Host, who did not recognize the authority of the Council of People's Commissars), without Petrograd's consent. To help the troops of Soviet Russia against Kaledin. To stop disarming Soviet regiments and the Red Guard. The Council of People's Commissars wrote in the ultimatum: "in the event that a satisfactory answer to these questions is not received within 48 hours, the Council of People's Commissars will consider the Rada to be in a state of open war against Soviet power in Russia and in Ukraine"[8]. The General Secretariat replied with a refusal the next day[7]. The puppet government withdrew that refusal. Thus Petrograd obtained a Ukrainian government that accepted the terms of the ultimatum. Petrograd also kept its own man inside the government. The people's secretary for inter-ethnic affairs, Bakinsky, was at the same time the representative of the Council of People's Commissars of Russia[3]. The historian Stanislav Kulchytsky describes direct supervision: "since no Ukrainian party centre existed, Lenin placed a temporary extraordinary commissar over the Kharkiv government"[9]. That commissar was Ordzhonikidze, an official of the central party apparatus[9]. The journal "Letopis revolyutsii" (a publication of Istpart, the party commission on history) wrote in 1924: "The all-Ukrainian government was a centre without a periphery, a headquarters without an army, when it had neither territory, nor a population subordinate to it, nor an armed force"[10].
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[11]. 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[12].
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[13]. 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"[14]. 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)[15].
In 1919 General Denikin refused to recognize the Mountain government and dissolved it[16]; 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"[17]. 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"[17]. 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[17].
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"[18]. The UN General Assembly declared the ensuing referendum void and confirmed that it "was not authorized by Ukraine"[19]. 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"[20].