Prior to its proclamation, the Central Council of Ukraine was elected in March 1917 as a result of the February Revolution, and in June, it declared Ukrainian autonomy within Russia.

Following the October Revolution, the Central Council of Ukraine denounced the Bolshevik seizure of power and proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic with a territory including the area of approximately eight Russian imperial governorates (Kiev, Volhynia, Kharkov, Kherson, Yekaterinoslav, Poltava, Chernigov and Podolia).

After the October Revolution the Kievan faction of the Bolshevik Party instigated the uprising in Kiev on 8 November 1917 in order to establish Soviet power in the city.

After expelling the government forces, the Rada announced a wider autonomy for the Ukrainian Republic, still maintaining ties to Russia, on 22 November 1917.

The Central Council of Ukraine called all revolutionary activities such as the October Revolution a civil war and expressed its hopes for the resolution of the chaos.

Besieged by the Bolsheviks and having lost much territory, the Rada was forced to seek foreign aid, and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 9 February 1918 to obtain military help from the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires.

[8][6][9][10][11] The German/Austro-Hungarian victories in Ukraine were due to the apathy of the locals and the inferior fighting skills of Bolsheviks troops compared to their Austro-Hungarian and German counterparts.

[11] The Germans arrested and disbanded the Tsentralna Rada on 29 April 1918 to stop the social reforms that were taking place and restarted the process of food supply transfer to Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The Hetmanate government also supported the confiscation of previously nationalized peasant lands by wealthy estate owners, often with the help of German troops.

On 30 July, a Russian Left Socialist-Revolutionary, Boris Mikhailovich Donskoy, with help from the local USRP succeeded in assassinating von Eichhorn, blowing him up in downtown Kiev at a broadlight.

Due to the impending loss of World War I by Germany and Austria-Hungary, Skoropadsky's sponsors, the Hetman formed a new cabinet of Russian Monarchists and committed to federation with a possible future non-Bolshevik Russia.

On 22 January 1919, the Directorate was officially united with the West Ukrainian People's Republic, although the latter entity de facto maintained its own army and government.

[13] Throughout 1919, Ukraine experienced chaos as the armies of the Ukrainian Republic, the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the foreign powers of the Entente, and Poland, as well as anarchist forces such as that of Nestor Makhno tried to prevail.

Preempting a planned invasion by its rival Archduke Wilhelm of Austria,[15] in October 1921 the Ukrainian National Republic's government-in-exile launched a series of guerrilla raids into central Ukraine that reached as far east as Kiev Oblast.

According to Cheka documentation, in Ukraine took place 268 uprisings from 1917 through 1932, where in over 100 raions the mutinied peasants were killing chekists, communists, and prodotryads that were requisitioning food by force which more resembled expropriation.

After the beginning of the World War II Taras Bulba-Borovets, with the support of the President of the Ukrainian People's Republic in exile Andrii Livytskyi, crossed the German-Soviet border and started organizing UPA military units subordinate to the UPR Government.

[20] The Ukrainian People's Republic was recognized de jure in February 1918 by the Central Powers of World War I (Austria-Hungary, Germany, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria)[21] and by Bolshevik Russia, the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Georgia, Azerbaijan, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the Holy See.

[22] According to the latest census that was taken 1897, the republic was accounted for over 20 million population in seven former Russian guberniyas, plus three uyezds of the Taurida Governorate that were located on the mainland.

This law was not fully implemented as on 29 April 1918 there was the anti-socialist coup in Kiev, after which Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky reverted the reform back to the guberniya-type administration.

Of course, due to constant intervention from the Petrograd sovnarkom and the German Empire the physical location of it was changing (Kamyanets-Podilsky, Bila Tserkva, others).