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The Union of Lublin establishes the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569 and much Ukrainian territory is transferred from Lithuania to the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, becoming Polish territory de jure.

Under the demographic, cultural and political pressure of Polonization, which had begun in the late fourteenth century, many landed gentry of Polish Ruthenia (another name for the land of Rus) convert to Catholicism and become indistinguishable from the Polish nobility.

Deprived of native protectors among Rus nobility, the commoners (peasants and townspeople) begin turning for protection to the emerging Zaporozhian Cossacks, who by the seventeenth century become devoutly Orthodox.

The Cossacks do not shy from taking up arms against those they perceive as enemies, including the Polish state and its local representatives.

The hetmanate is abolished in 1764; the Zaporizhska Sich is abolished in 1775, as Russia centralizes control over its lands.

As part of the partitioning of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the Ukrainian lands west of the Dnieper are divided between Russia and Austria.

Lithuanians and Poles control vast estates in Ukraine, and are a law unto themselves.

Judicial rulings from Kraków are routinely flouted, while peasants are heavily taxed and practically tied to the land as serfs.

Occasionally the landowners battle each other using armies of Ukrainian peasants.

The Poles and Lithuanians are Roman Catholics and try with some success to convert the Orthodox lesser nobility.

In 1596, they had set up the "Greek-Catholic" or Uniate Church; it dominates western Ukraine to this day.

Religious differentiation leave the Ukrainian Orthodox peasants leaderless, as they are reluctant to follow the Ukrainian nobles.

Cossacks lead an uprising, called Koliivshchyna, starting in the Ukrainian borderlands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1768.

Ethnicity is one root cause of this revolt, which includea Ukrainian violence that kills tens of thousands of Poles and Jews.

Religious warfare also breaks out among Ukrainian groups.

Increasing conflict between Uniate and Orthodox parishes along the newly reinforced Polish-Russian border on the Dnieper River in the time of Catherine II had set the stage for the uprising.

As Uniate religious practices have become more Latinized, Orthodoxy in this region has drawn even closer into dependence on the Russian Orthodox Church.

Confessional tensions also reflect  opposing Polish and Russian political allegiances.