Zaporozhian

Instead, the Zaporozhians tended to concentrate on their own affairs, that is, those of a relatively small (they rarely numbered more than 10,000), isolated Cossack fraternity based in the vast, empty steppes between the Hetmanate in the north and the Crimean Khanate in the south.

As the Zaporozhians began to clash with the newcomers a number of Serb settlements were wiped out and the colonization came to a halt.

The Zaporozhians detained the captains sent by Mazepa, placed them in custody ("as bandits"), and did not allow them to set fire to dry grasses in the "Wild Fields" (as had been planned in preparation for the campaign).

Then, too, towards the middle of the eighteenth century both the Russian government and the Zaporozhian nobility began to use all means to attract settlers to the Southern Ukraine.

[…]city-type centres and settlements in the Zaporozhian territory the Sich's role as the regional centre grew especially important and that fact unexpectedly gave to a free steppe region a highly centralized form of government.

The attitude of the Zaporozhian envoys in Moscow shows that for the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who played an extraordinarily important role in the opening stage of the uprising, Kyiv was a distant if not an alien center, clearly outside the scope of Zaporozhian influence.