The Russian Caucasus Army numbered a well-equipped 100,000 troops. However, the Russians redeployed almost half of the Caucasus Army to the Prussian front due to the defeats at the Battle of Tannenberg (August 23 – September 2, 1914) and the Masurian Lakes (September 9–14, 1914), leaving behind 60,000-65,000 troops. To remedy these troop movements Count Illarion Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashkov consulted with the Mayor of Tbilisi Alexandre Khatsian, the primate of Tbilisi Bishop Mesrop, and the prominent civic leader Dr. Hakob Zavriev about the creation of Armenian volunteer detachments. The Russian Armenian reservists had already been drafted into the regular armed forces and sent to the European theatre. The volunteer units consisted of Armenians, who were not citizens of the empire or obligated to serve. However, many other, non-Russian communities were also represented in the Russian Caucasus Army as volunteers, conscripts, and regular soldiers and officers. These particularly included men who belonged to Christian Orthodox communities settled in the surrounding Kars Oblast since 1878, such as Georgians and Caucasus Greeks, who generally saw service in the Russian imperial army as a means of achieving their own communities' ambitions to recapture Greek Orthodox territory from the Muslim Ottomans on the back of the Russian imperial enterprise.