[jb6]

Yeah, right. I guess the Cossaks didn't see you as soooo benign.

1648-1654 Khmelnitsky Uprising in Ukraine

There was already unrest in Ukraine because of Poland-Lithuania's attempt to control the Cossacks with laws and regulations. The Cossacks had led minor rebellions in the late 15th century, leading to the development of the Polish heavy cavalry, the famous Hussars. (See more on Hussars.) The Cossacks' main goal was independence for Ukraine (or at least more autonomy from Poland-Lithuania). They made it clear that it was not against King Ladislaus* IV, who was well-liked in Ukraine.

The Khmelnitsky* Uprising was the largest uprising the Cossacks launched to date and lasted six years. Cossack rebellions would flare up in Ukraine for the next 147 years, until 1795 and the partition of Poland-Lithuania

[Kozak]

And then our Russian neighbors, went form being allies to occupiers.

Third period (1775–1917). The third period in the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks began with the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich (1775) and the abolition of the Hetmanate (1780s). The abolition of the Cossack system evoked discontent among the Ukrainian populace, both from the officers, who had lost their political authority and feared they would also lose their rights as nobility (only a part of the Cossack starshyna were granted the rights of the Russian nobility), as well as from the common Cossacks, who, after the decree of 3 May 1783 on the enserfment of commoners, faced the threat of losing their privileges as an estate and even the possibility of enserfment. As a result there were numerous starshyna protests (eg, the ‘Oda na rabstvo’ [Ode on Slavery] of Vasyl Kapnist in 1782 and his mission to Berlin to receive Prussian aid in 1791) on the one hand, and a number of Cossack-peasant disturbances, which sometimes took on dimensions that threatened the existing order (eg, the Turbai uprising in 1789–93), on the other.