Kiev offensive (1920)

The Russian source puts the Polish forces on the Ukrainian sector at 30,400 infantry and 4,900 cavalry against 13,400 infantry and 2,300 cavalry of the Red 12th and 14th Armies, with some 15,000 of Petliura's troops besides. The Poles took Zhytomyr on 26 April and Berdychiv and the Kazatin rail junction on the 27th, and the 12th Army was scattered but escaped destruction because part of it had pulled back east beforehand. The English source counts about 20,000 prisoners by 2 May, the Russian source more than 25,000. On 7 May Polish cavalry of Rydz-Śmigły's force entered Kiev, and on the 9th Polish and Ukrainian troops held a victory parade on the Khreshchatyk. At Zhytomyr Piłsudski issued an appeal promising the Ukrainian people independence and the right to choose their own form of government. Yet the offensive achieved neither the common front with the South Russian Whites that France had wanted nor the destruction of the Soviet armies.

On the Soviet side Tukhachevsky's Western Front attacked in Belarus on 14 May and drew Polish forces north, and Yegorov's Southwestern Front, spearheaded by the 1st Cavalry Army brought from the Caucasus, counterattacked at the end of May. Rydz-Śmigły, intent on holding Kiev, refused orders to withdraw until he received Piłsudski's written order on 10 June, and he left the city after blowing up the Dnieper bridges and the power station. On 9 June the Polish government of Skulski resigned, and on 4 July Tukhachevsky's second offensive set out for Warsaw. Trotsky wrote in My Life: "We sincerely wanted peace. Piłsudski forced the war on us", and recalled that the Polish capture of Kiev, "devoid of any military sense in itself, did us a great service: the country shook itself awake." The English source notes that Soviet propaganda used the offensive to portray the Polish government as imperialist aggressors.