Diplomatic and consular outposts

The first Polish outposts in Ukraine started to be established at the turn of 1917 and 1918. Initially their status was semi-official or fully unofficial, and they performed quasi-consular duties, trying to provide assistance both for Polish residents in their catchment area as well as for refugees from the Congress Kingdom. Utilising the semi-official structures at their disposal, they continued the work of social organisations such as the Polish Society for Aid to War Victims (Polskie Towarzystwo Pomocy Ofiarom Wojny) which had operated earlier through an extensive network of local offices throughout Ukraine. An important initiative was the establishment in Kyiv of a coordinating centre known as the Generalny Komisariat, the branch of the Petrograd-based Liquidation Commission for the Affairs of the Kingdom of Poland (Komisja Likwidacyjna ds. Krolestwa Polskiego). Its ambition was to act as the representative of Polish interests to the UNR government, and its chief business was the issue of documents confirming the nationality of the vast numbers of Poles applying for this service. However, despite repeated efforts, it was never officially recognised as a consular office – either by the Ukrainian authorities or by the Polish Regency Council. The first institutions on Ukrainian territory holding an official mandate from the Polish authorities were set up in the summer of 1918. They were the Kyiv and Odesa offices of the Re-emigration Department in the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs. Nonetheless, the real breakthrough did not come until October 1918 and the establishment of direct diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Poland and Skoropads'kyi's Ukrainian State, when a Polish legation led by Stanisław Wańkowicz, the Regency Council's emissary, arrived in Kyiv. The legation included a separate consular department and military attache's office, and carried on with its work also after the Directory of the UNR ousted Hetman Skoropads'kyi from office, by which time it was acting as the official representative of the independent Republic of Poland. The office was closed down in April 1919 when its head, Counsellor Bohdan Kutyłowski, was forced to evacuate to Romania, ahead of the Bolshevik offensive. The Polish legation had obtained permission from the Hetman's government to set up a consulate general in Kyiv, and consulates in Odesa, Kharkiv, and Elizavetgrad.