THE DEATH OF Vytautas sharpened the issue of Podillya's identity. His long, nineteenyear rule did not appease the conflicting parties’ appetites for the region but, rather, entailed new conflicts. For the supporters of the king, Podillya had to return under the rule of Władysław II Jagiełło— or at least its western part, with the castles of Kamyanets, Smotrych, Skala, and Chervonohrod. They argued that Vytautas had had the right to rule over Podillya for life. In the other camp, the youngest brother of Władysław II Jagiełło, Švitrigaila, who had been familiar with Podillya, became the new grand duke of Lithuania, circumventing the will of Jagiełło, the overlord of Lithuania.

The event that drew everyone's attention to Podillya again was an attack on Kamyanets and other castles in Podillya. The Catholic Bishop Paweł from Bojańczyce and the Polish magnates of Podillya (barones Poloni terre predicte Podolie), namely Hrytsko Kierdeyovych, the Buczacki brothers, Teodoryk, Michał, and Michał Mużyło, and Krystyn from Gałów, headed the movement. They all came to Kamyanets to mourn the death of Vytautas. Having invited the starosta of Kamyanets, Dovgird, who at that point did not know about the death of Vytautas, for a conversation, they captured him, then took Kamyanets and other castles under their control and returned Podillya to the Kingdom of Poland. A different version of this story is included in A Tale on Podillya: the Poles who arrived to Kamyanets after the death of Vytautas invited the starosta of Kamyanets, Dovgird, for a council, robbed him, and then seized Kamyanets and everything else in Podillya.

In this context, one should pay attention to the denomination of the movement's leaders. Długosz explicitly names them the Polish magnates of Podillya. If they had been Poles, that would offer a perfect explanation for their motivation. In addition, it would work if Długosz had not written the story in the 1450s and 1460s— twenty years after the events took place— when the issue of western Podillya's ownership (the Podolian Voivodeship at the time) had returned to the agenda of the Kingdom of Poland's relationship with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.