 One day before the military negotiations began, the Soviet Politburo, pessimistically expecting the coming negotiations go be going nowhere, formally decided to consider German proposals seriously.The military negotiations began on 12 August in Moscow, with a British delegation headed by Sir Reginald Drax, a retired admiral, French delegation headed by General and the Soviet delegation headed by Kliment Voroshilov, the commissar of defence, and Boris Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff.Without written credentials, Drax was not authorised to guarantee anything to the Soviet Union and instructed by the British government to prolong the discussions as long as possible and to avoid answering the question that whether Poland would agree to permit Soviet troops to enter the country if the Germans invaded.