He commanded the 5th Infantry Division between February and June 1919, and then until August the 3rd Army Corps. He distinguished himself in that period by taking Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odessa. Between September 1919 and February 1920, he was military commander and governor of Ukraine and the Crimea, until he was forced out of Odessa by the Red Army's Odessa Operation (1920). He was widely criticised for the disastrous evacuation of the city on 6 and 7 February 1920, when thousands of White soldiers and civilians were left behind to fall into the hands of the Red Army and the Cheka.