Within months of its conclusion, the alliance between the Ukrainian emigres and the Ottoman Porte began to founder.
The main point of contention between the two sides was the issue of Right Bank Ukraine. For the Ottomans and their plans of creating a buffer zone on the northern shore of the Black Sea, the establishment of Orlyk and his men in Right Bank Ukraine seemed to be sufficient for their purposes.
But, for the Hetman, the occupation of the devastated, depopulated Right Bank, which was, to make matters worse, formally a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, promised to create greater problems than solutions for him and his men. Thus, although formally allied, the two sides began to pursue divergent and even conflicting policies.Well acquainted from his experience as Mazepa’s chancellor with the complexity of the problem, Orlyk made one more attempt to dissuade the Ottomans. In a long letter to Yusuf Pasha, he argued that the Russian willingness to give up the Right Bank was an outright trick:
It (Moscow) concedes that which it does not and cannot have. Behind this frightening mask (Moscow’s concession) I perceive the machinations, fraud and deception of the Muscovites who seek to take advantage of the Sublime Porte’s trustfulness. What right, actually, do the Muscovites have to Ukraine on this side of the Dnieper which belongs to us (Ukrainian Cossacks) not by right of secession but by right of perpetual habitation.1
He also emphasized that this Russian move was aimed at embroiling the Porte and the Cossacks in a conflict with the Poles to whom the Tsar had also promised the Right Bank. The letter concluded with an appeal which pointed out that Mazepa had risked everything to liberate all of Ukraine, not just a part of it, and it was this goal which should be pursued further. But the Porte chose to ignore these arguments. Resolutely it moved ahead to fulfill its “Ukrainian Plan.”