In 1912, the young archduke had made a first trip to the Ukraine to confirm whether, as he had heard so much, the Ukrainians were a bunch of bandits and criminals, and he was soon fascinated by that culture whose rights he decided to set himself up as a champion against the will paternal. He was then studying at the Vienna War College and as soon as he graduated he went to the front of the World War, already raising the banner of the interests of the Ukrainians living in Galicia.
In 1916 he joined the Austro-Hungarian Parliament, encouraging his cousin, the new Emperor Charles I, to conceive the idea of creating a Grand Duchy of Ukraine, supervised from Vienna, of which he could be sovereign. An idea briefly cherished also from Germany, which was considering the possibility of raising a newly minted monarchy there, and it was then that William took his local name of Vasyl Vyshyvany, creating for him in Vienna a battle group of 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers who, without However, they were unable to prevent Bolshevik Russia from ending any attempt to consolidate a free and independent Ukraine. The country came under the rule of a Hetman (head of state) managed from Moscow, while certain political circles once again formed a plan to depose the Hetman and place William on the throne of a Ukrainian kingdom.
Times of failed plots that forced the Archduke to flee Ukraine in October 1918, to enter a tuberculosis sanatorium and later wander through the Carpathians hiding in different monasteries. Finally, in June 1919, he was arrested by Romanian soldiers and sent to prison for three months. After his release, he swore allegiance to the Ukrainian People's Republic, which entrusted him with the position of colonel of the international relations section, while condemning the massacres of Jews in Poland and confronting his father, who came to disinherit him
