In Vienna, Trotsky continuously published articles in radical Russian and Ukrainian newspapers, such as "Kievskaya Mysl," under a variety of pseudonyms, often using "Antid Oto”. In September 1912, "Kievskaya Mysl" sent him to the Balkans as its war correspondent, where he covered the two Balkan Wars for the next year. While there, Trotsky chronicled the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbian army against the Albanian civilian population. He became a close friend of Christian Rakovsky, later a leading Soviet politician and Trotsky's ally in the Soviet Communist Party. On 3 August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, in which Austria-Hungary fought against the Russian Empire, Trotsky was forced to flee Vienna for neutral Switzerland to avoid arrest as a Russian émigré.