[9]: 300  Ulugh Muhammad was forced to leave the steppe, and migrated with his Horde eastward towards the mid-Volga region, and founded the Khanate of Kazan there.

At the same time, envoys from Lithuanian nobles who were unhappy being under a Polish-dominant Commonwealth brought gifts to Sayid Ahmad, who invaded Poland-Lithuania in 1453.

In 1480, Ahmed organized a military campaign against Moscow, resulting in a face off between two opposing armies known as the Great Stand on the Ugra River.

[12] On 6 January 1481, Ahmed was killed by Ibak Khan, the prince of the Khanate of Sibir, and Nogays at the mouth of the Donets River.

[15] The Muscovite prince Ivan III sided with Crimean khan Meñli I Giray, while Casimir IV Jagiellon of Lithuania and Poland allied himself with the Great Horde.

[20] The khans at Sarai controlled a decreasing number of tributary vassals from previous centuries, losing the southwestern Rus' (Ruthenian) principalities to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in the 1470s its traditional ally in the north, Muscovy, refusing to pay tribute any longer.

By the second half of the 15th century, the Great Horde found itself unable to properly control and protect trade on the lower Volga anymore either.

[20] Returning from Persia, Venetian diplomat Ambrogio Contarini had his property confiscated at Astrakhan when he passed through in 1475–1476; he was compelled to pay a large ransom to get it back.

[21] Ahmad Khan made it a policy to raid merchant caravans carrying valuable goods across his territory, in order to make up for these losses in revenue, but thus destabilising commerce in the region even further.

[21] Moreover, the Great Horde raided the territory of its neighbouring states for extra spoils, including the Oka river border with its nominal vassal Muscovy from the late 1440s onwards.

[21] In 1472, by which time Ahmad Khan was allied with Lithuania, which urged him to raid territory of their mutual Muscovite enemy, the Great Horde burnt down the town of Aleksin and crossed the Oka, but was then repelled.