In-mid July the Soviets made their view official when "Pravda" wrote an article about the situation in Afghanistan; the Soviets did not wish to see Amin become leader of Afghanistan. This triggered a political crisis in Afghanistan, as Amin initiated a policy of extreme repression, which became one of the main reasons for the Soviet intervention later that year. On 28 July, a vote in the PDPA Politburo approved Amin's proposal of creating a collective leadership with collective decision-making; this was a blow to Taraki, and many of his supporters were replaced by pro-Amin PDPA members. Ivan Pavlovsky, the Commander of the Soviet Ground Forces, visited Kabul in mid-August to study the situation in Afghanistan. Amin, in a speech just a few days after Pavlovsky's arrival, said that he wanted closer relations between Afghanistan and the People's Republic of China; in the same speech he hinted that he had reservations about Soviet meddling in Afghanistan. He likened Soviet assistance to Afghanistan with Vladimir Lenin's assistance to the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Taraki, a delegate to the conference held by the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, met personally with Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the Afghanistan situation on 9 September. Shah Wali, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was a supporter of Amin, did not participate in the meeting. This, according to Beverley Male, "suggested that some plot against Amin was in preparation".