Although for a few decades, since the Silent Sejm, Russia had seen the weak Poland as its own protectorate, Poland had also been devastated by a civil war in which the forces of the Bar Confederation, formed in Bar, attempted to disrupt Russian control over Poland. The recent Koliyivschyna peasant and Cossack uprising in Ukraine also weakened the Polish position. Besides, the Russian-supported Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, was seen as both weak and too independent-minded. Eventually, the Russian court decided that the usefulness of Poland as a protectorate had diminished.