Krzyżanowski attempted to build a larger anti-German coalition, hence opening negotiations with representatives of the Lithuaian and Belarussian resistance, which were fruitless, also issuing explicit orders that no ethnic group, including Jews, should be mistreated. He also opened negotiations with the representatives of the Lithuanian and Belorussian resistance but they were fruitless. The negotiations with the Soviets initially lead nowhere as well. The Soviet Union ultimately aimed to regain the control of the area it had in 1939 from Germany and Joseph Stalin's aim to ensure that an independent Poland would never reemerge in the postwar period. The relationship between the Soviets and the Sikorski's Polish government in exile, formally a commanding force of the AK, was strained at best, especially in the wake of the evidence of the mass execution of the Polish POW officers by the Soviets at Katyn which was discovered in 1943.As Soviet partisans were ordered to liquidate Polish Home Army units, so the local AK commanders considered the Soviets as just another enemy. As ordered by Moscow on 22 June 1943, the Soviet partisans in Poland started an open fight both against the German forces as well as the local Polish partisans.