German–Ukrainian–Crimean victory The Crimea Operation was a combined military offensive by Imperial German and Ukrainian forces in April 1918 against the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic.

[3] Upon seizing Crimea, Bolshevik forces enacted a campaign of terror upon the Crimean Tatar population, killing Muslim clerics and wealthy landowners with the express goal of eliminating the Tatarian "bourgeois nationalists".

[6][4] The relative quick pace of the operation was due to desertion and widespread demoralization amongst the forces of Taurida, in addition to simultaneous peasant revolts across Crimea.

[7] By the end of April 1918, the majority of the members of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, including council leader Anton Slutsky and local Bolshevik chief Jan Tarwacki, were arrested and shot in Alushta by insurgent Crimean Tatars, partially in reaction to the prior killing of Tatar independence leader Noman Çelebicihan by the Bolsheviks earlier in February.

[8] Despite the offensive violating the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, German forces immediately set up a military administration in Crimea against the wishes of the local Tatar population.