Cecan Sr's collaboration with the Red Army and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had begun some two months later, when he proceeded to recruit Bessarabians exiles to fight as partisans behind Romanian lines in the Ukrainian civil war. Though he was largely successful in organizing a detachment, he was placed under surveillance by the city's Special Department, and twice arrested as a "counterrevolutionary". In mid 1919, Cecan was recruited by the Red Army in its clashes with the UNR, and joined the Odessa riflemen commanded by a Jewish mobster, Mishka Yaponchik. He saw action against the Ukrainian People's Army, including outside Voznesensk on the Southern Bug, where Yaponchik was killed. One hostile report suggests that Cecan fled the battle; according to Șornikov, this cannot be accurate, as all deserters, including Yaponchik, had been massacred on the spot by the Cheka.