"[2] After rising to prominence as a successful soldier, he became a leader (Otaman) and the sworn brother of Hetman Yakiv Shah, elected by the Cossacks of the Registered Zaporozhian Host from Ukraine neighbouring Moldavia.

[9] In 1574, Ioan Vodă cel Cumplit, whose brother Pidkova claimed to be, had named the territory "Our Country from over the Dniester".

Pidkova was one of the so-called Domnișori ("Little Princes"), named so because of a more or less based claims of belonging to Moldavian ruling families, thus exercising demands of the throne.

Claiming to be Ioan III Vodă's half-brother, he together with Hetman Yakiv Shah chased Peter the Lame from the throne and resisted the first wave of violent Ottoman reaction.

He is the hero of Taras Shevchenko's romantic 1839 poem Ivan Pidkova, of Romanian writer Mihail Sadoveanu's socialist realist 1952 novel Nicoară Potcoavă, and of several Cossack ballads.