Ruzhynsky or Rozhynsky [Ружинський or Рожинський; Ružyns'kyj or Ružyns'kyj]. A Lithuanian princely family, with extensive estates in Volhynia and the Kyiv region, that produced several Cossack leaders in the 16th century. Bohdan (Bohdanko) Ruzhynsky, known as the hetman of the Lower [Dnipro River] Cossacks and remembered in folk songs, died in 1576 during a siege by 500 Cossacks of the Tatar fortress Aslan Kermen (now Kakhovka). Ostafii Ruzhynsky (d 1587) was representative of the Polish voivode in Kyiv (1575–81) and deputy starosta of Cherkasy. They were both described in Istoriia Rusov. Ostafii’s son Mykhailo Ruzhynsky was hetman of the registered Cossacks (1585). His other son, Kyryk Ruzhynsky, was a Zaporozhian otaman and deputy starosta of Cherkasy; he commanded a Polish military detachment that suppressed the uprising led by Severyn Nalyvaiko, but he was defeated at Bila Tserkva in 1596.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]