TRADITIONALLY, THE CHRONICLES of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania connect the subordination of the future Podillya to the Gediminas dynasty to the events that took place in response to Algirdas's victory at the Battle of Blue Waters in 1362, when he defeated the rulers of Podillya— Hadjibei, Kutlubuh, and Dmytro. The Suprasl Chronicle designates them as “the owners of father's and grandfather's possessions of Podolian land” (“отчичи и дедҍчи Подолъскои земли“) and “brothers” (“брати“), which refers, as Nikolay Ruseev suggests, to their equal rank in the Golden Horde's society of that time. They were not the relatives but the rulers of tümen. In this context, the number of rulers corresponds to the three sons of Kuremsa, who ruled his possessions in the middle of the thirteenth century (see Chapter 1).

Historians have been interested in the mapping of these Tatar rulers’ possessions for a long time. The possessions of Hadjibei and Kutlubuh are mapped on the basis of place names such as Hadjibei, a settlement on the territory of modern-day Odesa, and the lake of Katlabuh (corresponding to the name of Kutlubuh), near the modern city of Izmail. These versions have both their supporters— Yaroslav Dashkevych, Nikolay Ruseev— and critics who undermine the theories, such as Oleksandr Halenko. According to Halenko, the ulus of Kutlubuh was situated in Crimea, which is hard to square with the subsequent history of Podillya.

Without getting into the issue of identifying Hadjibei and Kutlubuh within the Horde's elite of that time (although it is worth noting that a number of attempts have been made), let us take a look at the geographical markers referring to Kutlubuh. There is a consensus among most researchers that Hadjibei's possessions were located between the Dniester River and the Southern Bug River, based on the numerous mentions of the settlement of Hadjibei since the fifteenth century.

There are some interesting observations on the toponyms and hydronyms consonant with the Kutlubuh name. Similar to or derivative of it is the name of a village and the Kotlubaivka River in the western Vinnytsya oblast.