[2][better source needed] Because of the coup, at the request of the abbot, residents of the village of Melnyky formed a self-defense unit to protect the monastery from looting.
Otamans Gerasym Nesterenko-Orel, Tryfon Gladchenko, Mykhailo Melashko, Sirko, Oko, Chorny Voron (Chornoguzko), Mefodiy Golyk-Zalizniak, Semen Vovk, Oleksa Kotsyubenko, Kalyuzhny, D. Kanatenko, 1st and 2nd Olexandrian Regiments were subordinated to him.
In March 1920, the Steppe Division of the UPR Army, numbering between 12,000 and 18,000 men,[3] liberated Kherson from the Bolsheviks and led a successful offensive to the west (via Bilozerka) along the Kamyanka-Yehradivka-Ruzhychiv-Chyhyryn line.
At this meeting, Kostya Blakytny was elected Chief Otaman of all insurgent units of the Kholodny Yar and its environs.
The authorities of the Kholodnoyarsk Republic were also recognized by coastal villages (up the Dnipro to Cherkasy: Ratseve, Tinky, Borovytsia, Topylivka, Sagunivka, Khudyaky, Buzhyn, Lesky, and others).
One of the stages of the Cheka's special operation to liquidate the Kholodnoyarsk Republic was the so-called "amnesty" promised to those insurgents who would surrender voluntarily.
[1] After that, the "amnestied" wrote a letter to the otamans Khmara, Zagorodny, Zaliznyak and others calling for an end to the struggle and the transition to the side of the Ukrainian Soviet government.