Yurii Khmelnytskyi

Yurii Khmelnytsky (Ruthenian: Юрый Хмелницкій / Юрий Хмелницкий / Юрій Хмелницкій; , , ), monastic name Hedeon (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 and archimandrite, he also was Hetman of Ukraine in 1659–1660 and 1678–1681 and starost of Hadiach, becoming one of the most well-known Ukrainian politicians of the "Ruin" period for the Cossack Hetmanate.

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

During the conflict against Poland–Lithuania, Yurii Khmelntsky's Cossacks were defeated near the town of Korsun, he was captured by the Poles and later pledged loyalty to king Jan II Kazimierz of Poland–Lithuania (reigned 1648–1668).

In 1659, the parliament (sejm walny) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth granted him the status of nobility. Georgiy Konyssky, an 18th-century Ukrainian author and religious figure, wrote on Yurii being taken to Istanbul, before eventual exile to a monastery somewhere in the Mediterranean. One of the possible locations is Malta, where a "Cossack general's" grave is being shown as a tourist attraction.