The call-up of the Turkish Army was followed by Helphand's first wartime experiment in subversion against the Tsarist r&eactue;gime. In Vienna and in Lvov, the Ukrainians—also known as the Ruthenes, whose western settlements extended into the Habsburg Empire—had set up a society called the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine ; after the outbreak of the war, it began to agitate extensively in the press and in the camps of the Russian prisoners of war. The Union aimed at the establishment of the Russian Ukraine as an independent state, and it soon began to receive protection and financial support from official quarters in
Vienna and Berlin. The Austrian and th German Governments were now favouring, eagerly but without much discrimination, a variety of activities aimed at the weakening of the Tsarist Empire. They put considerable sums at the disposal of the Union, and then placed it under the control of the Foreign Ministry in Vienna.7