On December 5, 1917, the Armistice of Erzincan was signed by Russians and Ottomans, ending the armed conflicts between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the Caucasus Campaign of the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. The Committee of Union and Progress moved to win the friendship of the Bolsheviks with the signing of the Ottoman-Russian friendship treaty (January 1, 1918). On January 11, 1918, the special decree "On Armenia" was signed by Lenin and Stalin which armed and repatriated over 100,000 Armenians from the former Tsar's Army to be sent to the Caucasus for operations against Ottoman interests. On January 20, 1918, Talaat Pasha entered an official protest against the Bolsheviks arming Armenian army legions and replied, ""the Russian leopard had not changed its spots"." Bolsheviks and Armenians would take the place of Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich's Russian Caucasus Army.