1653: After Yerofey Khabarov’s arrest and departure to Moscow in the fall of 1653, Onufriy Stepanov was appointed his deputy in the region of Dauria (upper reaches of the Amur River) and put in charge of the 320 men who remained there.
The Cossacks made an attempt to besiege the trenches, but sustained losses and had to retreat downriver where they were joined by 30 men under sotnik Beketov.
The outnumbered defenders repulsed several assaults, but the Manchus ran short of food and lifted the siege the on April 3, 1655, after destroying the Russian boats.
1655–58: After this incident Stepanov ordered a few of his men to travel to Moscow, Arica and deliver the yasak, collected during his stay in the Amur region.
Meanwhile, fifty Tomsk Cossacks led by a boyar son Fyodor Pushchin (who had been fighting the Tungus at the mouth of the Argun River) joined Onufriy Stepanov.
On July 22, 1656, he dispatched a group of fifty Cossacks to Moscow to deliver a new yasak, providing them with a letter asking the tsar not to send his men back to him due to the lack of food in the Amur region.
[4] 270 Russians were lost and 222 escaped, of whom 180 formed themselves into outlaw bands that lived by raiding the natives in the Zeya area until they were largely wiped out by the Manchus in 1660.
Such a tragic finale of the Stepanov party discouraged the Russian leaders from collecting yasak from the natives of the Amur region and made them abandon its official conquest for the next 15 or so years.