History of Kyiv (1657–1811)

The history of Kyiv from the end of the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1657) until the Great Fire of Podil (1811) encompasses the period in which it served as a significant city – although not the capital – within the Cossack Hetmanate. The 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement with the Tsardom of Russia established a Muscovite vassalage for early modern Ukraine. The first few decades were known as The Ruin, when Muscovy, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Crimean Khanate (itself an Ottoman vassal) competed for power and influence over the Hetmanate, while the Zaporizhian Sich increasingly went its own separate way. The city of Kiev had seen much fighting and devastation in the 1650s, with Podil (the Lower City) still being its urban centre.