The emergence of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with a government, state administrative system, and diplomatic service of its own, on the eastern border of the Republic of Poland, offered an opportunity but also a serious challenge to Polish foreign policy. On the one hand Warsaw pinned considerable hopes on the prospect of “Rakovskii's Ukraine” achieving a kind of independence, but on the other it soon turned out that in its pursuit of emancipation Kharkiv started to take an active part in the secret war between Poland and the Soviets, and with time was even taking the lead in this conflict.

The domestic situation on the Polish political scene did not help to define a new, coherent policy on Ukraine. Already at the time of the Riga Conference the Piłsudskiites forfeited the monopoly they had enjoyed hitherto to determine Poland's eastern policy, and in the following months their influences diminished even more. Marshal Piłsudski's adherents kept a fairly strong position only in the Eastern Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in their bastion – but only for a time, until the “purges” which started in mid-923 – the Second Department of the General Staff. The coming to power of the Chjeno–Piast government marked the triumph of the Right Wing hostile to Piłsudski, who withdrew from public affairs in a flurry of protest in the wake of the conflict. However, ideas with which the National Democrats sympathised had already started to take over Poland's foreign policy earlier. Their mentor was Foreign Minister Konstanty Skirmunt, who wanted to pursue an idiosyncratic Realpolitik with respect to the Soviets, treating the Riga settlement as a permanent foundation for mutual relations and seeking to take advantage economically of the peace that had been achieved. One of the elements in Skirmunt's vision was an attempt to expand economically into Ukraine, which he perceived as a natural resource of raw materials and consumer market for Poland. Skirmunt and his collaborators thought that the Poles living in Ukraine could play a decisive part in these plans, since they had made an active contribution to Ukrainian economic affairs prior to the Revolution.