Yurii Khmelnytsky

Yurii Khmelnytsky (Юрій Хмельницький, Jerzy Chmielnicki, Юрий Хмельницкий) (1641–1685), younger son of the famous Ukrainian Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and brother of Tymofiy Khmelnytsky, was a Zaporozhian Cossack political and military leader. Although he spent half of his adult life as a monk, he also was Hetman of Ukraine on several occasions — in 1659-1660 and 1678–1681 and starost of Hadiach. For background see The Ruin (Ukrainian history).

Hetman of Ukraine
Yurii Khmelnytsky was born in 1641 in Subotiv near Chyhyryn in central Ukraine. In 1659 the Cossack Rada elected 17-year-old Yurii as their hetman in Bila Tserkva instead of deposed Ivan Vyhovsky. The young hetman was faced with the uneasy alliance with Tsardom of Russia and the ongoing wars against Poland-Lithuania and the Crimean Khanate.

In 1659 he was granted nobility by parliament (sejm walny) of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. On 24 March 1661 he became starost of Hadiach.

During the latter conflict, Yurii Khmelnytsky's Cossacks were defeated near the town of Korsun, he was captured by the Poles and later pledged loyalty to king Jan II Kazimierz. This provoked a civil war within Ukraine in 1661, when the new ataman Yakym Somko led the pro-Moscow Cossacks against Yurii and his new Polish allies. At the battle near the town of Pereiaslav in the Summer of 1662 Yurii Khmelnytsky was defeated by Somko's Cossacks and the Russians under Grigory Romodanovsky.

After the defeat, Khmelnytsky entered an alliance with the Crimean Khanate but this resulted in little beyond massive looting and raiding of Ukrainian towns and villagesby the Tatars. Thereupon Yurii gave up his hetman title and became a monk at the Mharsky Monastery in the autumn of 1662. Between 1664 and 1667 he was imprisoned in Lviv by hetman Pavlo Teteria.

Hetman of Right-bank Ukraine
After his release, in 1672 he participated in a campaign against the Tatars and was captured near Uman and brought to Constantinople, where he was allowed to live in a Greek Orthodox monastery. In 1676 — after the Sultan's ally, Petro Doroshenko, surrendered to the Russians — the Porte decided to use Khmelnytsky's famous name to reinforce their claim to the Right-bank Ukraine starting the Russo-Turkish War (1676–1681).

In 1678 the Turkish army captured Chyhyryn and declared Yurii Khmelnytsky as a new hetman of Ukraine, although in reality he was only a puppet for the Ottoman Sultan. Ottoman Turkish army with Yurii in tow captured and burned down Kaniv and other Ukrainian towns. He then retired to his Sultan dictated capital at Nemyriv in Turkish occupied parts of Ukraine, as a vassal of sultan Mehmed IV until 1681, when the Turks removed him from power due to his unstable mental health and unprecedented cruelty. Two years later, he was briefly re-instated by the Poles. Finally in 1685 the Turks captured Yurii and executed him (strangled ) in Kamianets-Podilskyi.

Unlike his father, Yurii was unable to master the very complex situation he faced and was often manipulated by foreign powers.