GERMANY AND UKRAINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16848, 13 May 1918, Page 4

GERMANY AND UKRAINE.

One of the confusing elements in the unhappy condition of the new republic of Ukraine is that the State is still formally at war with Russia. It is to the interest of neither Russians nor Ukrainians to continue the -desultory fighting which has taken place since December, but' Germany finds it expedient to embitter relations between the two peoples. Under the third article of the treaty concluded with Ukraine, Germany promised to commence the evacuation of occupied territory immediately. She did not keep* the promise, using the pretext of Russian aggression as an excuse for sending armed forces into the country to oppose the Bolsheviks. The hollowness of this pretence was realised even in the Central Empire. Austria refused to continue the war against the Bolsheviks, and thei;e was unusually plain speaking in the Reichstag over the breach of the treaty on which the ink was still wet. For some weeks there has been practically no fighting between the Great and Little Russians, but German troops have remained in Ukraine for the double purpose of seizing food and penetrating into Bolshevik Russia. Rostoff, where they have been defeated by Russian cavalry, is in the province of the Don Cossacks, well to the east of the boundaries of Ukraine as recognised by the Central Powers. It is probable that Germany desires to provoke the Russians into some show of resistance in order to give her an excuse for sending forces further afield in search of the food which Ukraine is not providing in the desired quantity. The reported demand for the occupation of Moscow and other cities appears to foreshadow new forms of aggression against a helpless enemy. Germany is openly using all the States with which she recently concluded peace as reservoirs from which to draw food and raw material. Her army of occupation is to garrison Roumania for this purpose. With the same object armed forces were sent into Ukraine in defiance of treaty, and when the brutality and greed of the Germans united the Ukrainians against them- the Rada was dissolved by force and a military dictatorship established. It is quite probable that the food obtained in Ukraine has been bitterly disappointing to Germany. Fertility of soil does not of itself produce wheat, and agriculture has been neglected in the whole of Russia, Ukraine included, since civil war laid its paralysing hand on the country. It is possible, therefore, that the hope of obtaining food may take the Germans far into Russia and then prove illusory.