The article presents an overview of the background and course of the first of four Russian–Ukrainian wars during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921: the war unleashed by the Russian Bolsheviks in late 1917. The author shares the story of the Bolsheviks’ political manipulations which preceded the military invasion; he talks of the Bolsheviks’ public hypocrisy, which combined recognition of the right of nations to self-determination with unacceptable demands of Ukrainians. The Bolshevik strategy was to portray the attack on the Ukrainian People’s Republic as an internal Ukrainian conflict – the struggle of the “proletariat” against the “bourgeois Central Rada”. We examine the process of creating a puppet Soviet government of Ukraine, under the cover of which troops from Russia led the occupation of the republic. In addition, we emphasize the theme of “red terror” that was widely used by the Bolsheviks during the war. We draw attention to the similarity of approaches to warfare in contemporary Russia of today and a century ago.