763.72119/3224: Telegram
The President of the National Council of the Western Ukrainian Republic ( Petrouchevitch ) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received December 29, 1918.]
The Polish Government at Warsaw is continually sending troops in large number to Eastern Galicia. Its object is to overthrow by military force the former Ukrainian state of Halytch reestablished within its territory by the Ukrainian nation in the exercise of the peoples’ right of self-determination and at present constituted as the “Western Ukrainian Republic” and to annex it by violence to the Polish kingdom. The Ukrainian nation of Galicia is desperately fighting that hostile invasion and calling, in vain thus far, for help to stop that violation of the right of national autonomy and of the armistice by the Poles. General Rozvadowski, Commander in Chief of Galicia is ordering the arrest of peaceful Ukrainian citizens to be held as hostages, other pogroms that are even more frightful, is manhandling and persecuting the Ukrainians in the most brutal manner, while Polish emissaries carry on with the Governments of the Allies and in the press a campaign of most incredible slander and lying against the Ukrainian nation of the Western Ukrainian Republic to prevent any neutral step being taken by the Governments of the High Allies. The Roumanian army has likewise occupied the Ukrainian parts of Bukowina and annexed them to Roumania in the name of King Ferdinand. The Ukrainian population of Eastern Galicia and of Bukowina are but exercising in its national territory the right of autonomy recognized by President Wilson and by the High Allies and I, as President of the Ukrainian National Council at Leopold take upon myself the honor to beg the High Governments of the Allies kindly to urge upon the governments of Warsaw and Bucharest the immediate evacuation of Eastern Galicia by the Polish troops and of the Ukrainian parts of Bukowina by the Roumanian army in order to stop the awful bloodshedding and to enable the Ukrainian population of the above-named regions freely exercise without restriction, as the other nations of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy are doing, its right of self-determination in the sense of the principles upheld by the Allies.