Treaty of Pereyaslav

1654

Bohdan Khmelnytsky, exhausted by war with Poland, concluded a treaty at Pereyaslav placing the Cossack Hetmanate under the protection of the Russian tsar Alexei. Russia now had a claim to Ukraine, and the long struggle between Moscow, Warsaw, and Constantinople for the Black Sea steppe entered a new phase, one whose consequences are still playing out in the twenty-first century.