He was given the rank of major and made the regional commander of the UPA-North in 1944,[citation needed] and he briefly joined the People's Revolutionary Liberation Organisation, a left-wing group in Volhynia that was active the same year.

As the German armies withdraw, we should take advantage of this convenient moment for liquidating the entire male population in the age from 16 up to 60 years.

The NKVD interrogation protocol of Mitchik from 1945 is the only archival document that contains a reference to Klyachkivsky and "secret directive", with statements similar to the above text.

Based on these results Ryabenko postulated that the "secret directive" never existed and the above quote was compiled from statements attributed to Mitchik in the interrogation protocol, likely written by NKVD and signed by the defendant under torture.

In particular, Y. Stelmashchuk, the local commander of the UPA, stated during his NKVD interrogation[9]: 94 :In the same June of 1943, ― the defendant submits information, ― in the Kolkiv forest, I met with Klym Savur [Klyachkivskyi], the deputy head of the stake of the main team Andriyenko.

Andrienko told me that these instructions are not from the center, that they are distortions on the ground, but he did not say anything specific.Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Viatrovych, uses it to support the claim that at that time the murders were not done at the order of the central leadership, but were a local initiative.

As a result of the aggravation of contradictions between the leaders of the OUN, R. Shukhevich was elected instead of M. Lebed as the head of the Bureau of the Central Directorate in April 1943.