Hoping to make profit from Russia's concentration on Livonian affairs, Devlet I Giray of Crimea, accompanied by as many as 120,000 horsemen, repeatedly devastated the Moscow region, until the Battle of Molodi put a stop to such northward incursions. But for decades to come, the southern borderland was annually pillaged by the Nogai Horde and the Crimean Khanate, who took local inhabitants with them as slaves. Tens of thousands of soldiers protected the Great Abatis Belt — a burden for a state whose social and economic development was stagnating.