King Sigismund and the magnates of the…

King Sigismund and the magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth know full well that they are not capable of any serious invasion of Russia; the Commonwealth army is too small, its treasury always empty, and the war lacks popular support.

However, as the situation in Russia deteriorates, Sigismund and many Commonwealth magnates, especially those with estates and forces near the Russian border, begin to look for a way to profit from the chaos and weakness of their eastern neighbor.

Some of them look to their own profits, trying to organize support for their own ascension to the Russian throne.

Others look to their western neighbor, the Commonwealth, and its attractive Golden Freedoms, and together with some Polish politicians plan for some kind of union between those two states.

Yet others will try to tie their fates with that of Sweden in what is to become known as the De la Gardie Campaign and the Ingrian War to which the former is a prelude.

The advocates of a union of Poland-Lithuania with Russia propose a union, similar to the original Polish–Lithuanian Union of Lublin involving a common foreign policy and military; the right for the nobility to choose the place where they will live and to buy landed estates; the removal of barriers for trade and transit; the introduction of a single currency; increased religious tolerance in Russia (especially the right to build churches of non-Orthodox faiths); and the sending of boyar children for an education in more developed Polish academies (like the Jagiellonian University).

However, this project will never gain much support; many boyars fear that the union with the predominantly Catholic Poland–Lithuania would endanger Russia's Orthodox traditions and opposed anything that threatens the Russian culture, especially the policies aimed at curtailing the influence of the Orthodox Church, intermarriage and education in Polish schools that has already led to Polonization of the Ruthenian lands under Polish control.