At the start of 1919, fighting broke out almost by accident and without any orders from the respective governments, when self-organized Polish military units in Kresy ("Borderland") areas of Lithuania, Belarus and western Ukraine (the Samoobrona Litwy i Białorusi numbering approximately ~2,000 soldiers under general Wejtko) clashed with local communist units and advance Bolshevik forces, each trying to secure the territories for its own incipient government. Eventually the more organised Soviet forces quelled most of the resistance and drove the remaining forces west.