861.00/4093: Telegram
The Commission to Negotiate Peace to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received 6:03 a.m.]
1189. Following from [Jenkins at] Odessa.
1. March 14, 5 p.m. General picture southern Russia today portrays the following:
Bessarabia is occupied by Roumanian troops under French command. They have crossed Dniester at Bene [Bender] and have taken the town of Tiraspol and Razdelnaia, thus opening railroad from Odessa to Galatz. Thence the line of the Odessa district extends east to the north of Bolshoi Buyalik through Berezovka to the west of Nicolaef and then directly south to the Black Sea. The French general d’Anselme is in supreme command of the district which has been today declared to be in a state of siege. He has at his disposal half a French division as well as nearly two Greek divisions. Reenforcements are arriving and are expected to total one army [corps] of five divisions. The Volunteer Army of Denikine is commanded in this district by General Sannikoff and numbers approximately 7,000, whose operations are restricted by the French to the city of Odessa with the exception of three squadrons at Berezovka. There is also half a French division stationed [at Tabriz,] in the Sebastopol region. Kherson was occupied March 10 and Nicolaef March 12 by Ataman [Grigor]ieff, formerly with Petlyura but now operating independently. He had approximately 2,000 Bolshevik troops and ten [irregular] pillaging bands numbering from 10,000 to 15,000. Bolshevik territory has been extended Kiev southwesterly to Letichef in Podolia, thence southeast through Olgopol to Nicolaef, including the towns of Vinnitza and Voznesensk. The territory to the west of this line and north of Bessarabia is occupied by Petlyura, whose present headquarters are at Zhmerinka. [Page 753] He has been negotiating with the French here and a convention said [by] d’Anselme to be purely military, cessions of a nature [omission?] only in general, has already or will soon be ratified. The French have made the release of imprisoned Ukrainian ministers one of the conditions of the agreement.
The Don Cossacks under Bogayeffsky have joined forces with the Volunteer Army of Denikine who, roughly speaking, is reported to have control of the whole north Caucasus, southwesterly half of the Don district and the region to the north of the Sea of Azov from a point approximately one hundred miles north of Mariupol to and including Melitopol. Please repeat Department. Jenkins.