As somewhat of an outsider among his fellow officers because of his ethnicity, he met another officer shunned by his peers, Baron Ungern-Sternberg, whose eccentric nature and disregard of the rules of etiquette and decorum repelled others. He and Ungern tried to organize a regiment of Assyrian Christians to aid in the Russian fight against the Ottomans. In July 1917, Semyonov left the Caucasus and was appointed commissar of the Provisional Government in the Baikal region and was responsible for recruiting a regiment of Buryat volunteers.