Ekaterinoslav March

In the days of Pavlo Skoropadskyi's fall from power, the 8th Hetman Corps resolved to join the Volunteer Army. On November 23, 1918, armed clashes between the corps and Petliura's troops took place, as a result of which Yekaterinoslav remained in the hands of volunteers. However, the situation around the city continued to remain unsafe for the troops defending it. The corps leadership decided to flee south to the Crimea in order to join with the rest of Denikin's army. On the night of November 27-28, 1918, a detachment ventured south from Yekaterinoslav, led by General I.M. Vasilchenko, and his chief of staff, Colonel I.G. Konovalov. The Petliurists, in turn, occupied the city. On December 22, 1918, UNA troops dissolved the Yekaterinoslav Soviets, then on December 26 they disarmed the Bolshevik military revolutionary headquarters and attacked the local Bolshevik detachments.[1]

The Ukrainian People's Republic subsequently proposed an alliance with the Makhnovists, which was rejected due to the "bourgeois nationalist" character of the Directorate.[2]

The volunteer detachment, when leaving Yekaterinoslav, held over a thousand people in its ranks. It was based on the 43rd and 44th Infantry Regiments (300-400 people), the Yekaterinoslav volunteer squad (about 250 people), as well as the 7th Cavalry Novorossiysk Regiment (about 150-170 sabers). In addition, the detachment included an armored division of 4 vehicles, artillery, a radio station, an engineering platoon and an infirmary. Most of the participants in the campaign were officers.

For 34 days, the detachment fought over 500 miles. Due to the impossibility of moving through the impassable autumn mud, as well as due to the lack of fuel, part of the armored vehicles was blown up at the very beginning of the campaign. Due to the impossibility of moving directly to Rostov-on-Don to the locations of the main forces of the Volunteer Army, due to the deployment on the route of the Makhnovist and Petliura troops, the detachment decided to move along the right bank of the Dnieper in the direction of Perekop. Breaking through the encirclement, the detachment fought a battle with the Petliurists on November 29 near the German colony of Neyenburg, followed by bloody battles with the Makhnovists on December 10 in the area of Maryinskaya and Novovorontsovka and on December 11 near Dutchino. On December 13, near Berislavl, a large battle took place with the formations of Nikifor Grigoriev over control of the Dnieper crossing. One of the leaders of the Yekaterinoslav campaign, General P.G. Kisly, was wounded in the battle.

On December 27, 1918, under the disguise of a commuter train,[3] the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine launched an attack on Yekaterinoslav, capturing it from the Petliurist forces, who retook the city only a few days later.[4]

In the last days of December 1918, the Yekaterinoslav detachment, led by General Vasilchenko, having lost some of its personnel during the fighting, arrived in Perekop. In early January 1919, the Yekaterinoslav volunteers were sent to Dzhankoy, and then on to Simferopol.

On the basis of the detachment from Yekaterinoslav, the command of the Volunteer Army formed the 4th Infantry Division of General Korvin-Krukovsky, the 34th Artillery Brigade and the Novorossiysk Cavalry Regiment. The headquarters of General Vasilchenko became part of the headquarters of the Crimean-Azov army of General Borovsky A. A. On June 6, 1920, a special insignia was established for the participants of the campaign. The Yekaterinoslav campaign by its nature has much in common with the Drozdov campaign in the spring of 1918 and the Starobelsk campaign of the same time.