In a coup d’état they ousted the Ukrainian National Assembly and installed a so-called Hetmanate under the Tsarist cavalry officer Pyotr Skoropadskyi.37 Only six weeks after the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, under the pressure of economic necessity, the German military had unilaterally abandoned any residual claim to be acting as the protector of the legitimate cause of self-determination.
