On 9 August 1960, politician Albert Kalonji declared the region of south-eastern Kasai, on the Congo's southern border with Portuguese Angola, to be the new Mining State of South Kasai ("État minier du Sud-Kasaï") or Autonomous State of South Kasai ("État autonome du Sud-Kasaï"). The use of the word "state" ("état") was deliberately ambiguous, allowing Kalonji to avoid specifying whether the South Kasai claimed to independence as a nation-state in imitation of Katanga, or as a province within the Congo. Due to rejection of requests to the UN for aid to suppress the South Kasai and Katanga revolts, the Lumumba Government decided to request Soviet assistance. De Witte writes that "Leopoldville asked the Soviet Union for planes, lorries, arms, and equipment. ...Shortly afterwards, on 22 or 23 August, about 1,000 soldiers left for Kasai." De Witte goes on to write that on 26–27 August, the ANC seized Bakwanga, Albert Kalonji's capital in South Kasai, without serious resistance. "In the next two days it temporarily put an end to the secession of Kasai."