Historically the buĊawa was an attribute of a Hetman, an officer of the highest military rank (after the monarch) in 15th- to 18th-century Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and of the Otaman of Ukraine or the military head of a Cossack state (Cossack Hetmanate).
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The bulava was part of the Ukrainian Cossack Kleinody that were awarded by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky to the Zaporizhian Host.