The Ukrainian bodies have not subsequently challenged the union. An anti-Bessarabian and anti-Romanian campaign was started in 1918-1919 in a part of the western press. A "Committee for the Defence of Bessarabia" was formed in Odessa, by supporters of the White movement such as Alexander Krupenski, Alexander Schmidt and Vladimir Tsyganko, with backing from Mihail Savenco, Mark Slonim, and others. The activity of many of these people had substantial personal baggage - Krupenski was during the Tsarist rule the most influential and powerful person in Bessarabia, Schmidt was mayor of Chișinău, Savenco was the former Minister of Justice of the Moldavian Republic, all of them very unpopular. They have send a memo to the Paris Peace Conference, published several newspaper articles and brochures targeting the French public opinion, portraying the situation in Bessarabia as a Romanian military occupation. Their activity was later supplanted by Bolsheviks, who proclaimed a Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic on May 5, 1919 in Odessa.