According to a noted interwar Polish publicist, the Polish–Ukrainian War was the principal cause for the failure to establish a Ukrainian state in Kyiv in late 1918 and early 1919. During that critical time the Galician forces, large, well-disciplined and immune to Communist subversion, could have tilted the balance of power in favor of a Ukrainian state. Instead, it focused all of its resources on defending its Galician homeland. When the western Ukrainian forces transferred rast in the summer of 1919 after they had been overwhelmed by the Poles, the Russian forces had grown significantly, and the impact of the Galicians was no longer decisive.