On 19 September, President Beneš, in receipt now of the increasingly bad news from the Western capitals, where the fate of Czechoslovakia was being decided in his absence, summoned Soviet Ambassador Sergei Aleksandrovskii and asked him to put two questions to Moscow: (1) Would Moscow render military assistance to Czechoslovakia if Hitler attacked and if France rendered such assistance, and (2) would Moscow otherwise render such assistance if it were approved by the League of Nations under Article 16? On the following day, V. P. Potemkin responded, in Litvinov's absence in Geneva, with an unqualified affirmative to both questions.

The shuttle diplomacy of Neville Chamberlain was by this time quite publicly apparent, everywhere the subject of the headlines, and it ratcheted up both the focus of attention and the pace of diplomatic – and other – developments. On 22 September, as Chamberlain flew to Berchtesgaden, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Kamil Krofta summoned Aleksandrovskii again. This time he reported that the Poles were concentrating a large military force on the border of Czechoslovakia, and he asked Moscow to warn them that an attack on Czechoslovakia would automatically void, according to Article 2, the Polish–Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty of 1932. On the following day, the Soviet government issued precisely such a warning to the Polish Embassy in Moscow and followed it with a public declaration to the same effect: If the Poles attacked Czechoslovakia, Moscow would denounce the nonaggression pact.