{"id":179897,"date":"2022-05-10T17:09:12","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T14:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/?p=179897"},"modified":"2022-05-10T17:09:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-10T14:09:14","slug":"ukraine-in-flames-61","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/en\/ukraine-in-flames-61","title":{"rendered":"Why Ukrainians and Russians are not brothers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n\t
\n\t
<\/div><\/div>\n\t <\/div>\n\t <\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Putin constantly repeats the same mantra: Russians and Ukrainians are fraternal peoples. He sometimes makes bold claims that Ukrainians are a branch of the Russian people. It is a historical fact that a Medieval state of Rus\u2019, which had its capital in Kyiv, existed in Eastern Europe in the 10th century. Rus\u2019 was the whole territory that recognized the power of the Kyiv prince in the broadest sense. Alternatively, the lands of the Middle Dnipro around Kyiv are called Rus\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A twisted interpretation of the historical fact about common statehood in Rus\u2019 is the foundation of Putin\u2019s confidence in the fraternity of the Russians and Ukrainians. To call Rus\u2019 the national state of the Russians is the same as to call a wooden abacus the first computer, as the Ukrainian historian Jaroslav Hrytsak wittily pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The early origins of the Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian and partly Lithuanian peoples are in Medieval Rus\u2019, but the history of these peoples was formed in completely different political conditions. Significant cultural, economic, social, ideological and, importantly, linguistic differences emerged in the course of a millenium. As the Kyivan Rus\u2019 disintegrated by the 13th century, new political projects emerged in its former territories: the Kingdom of Galicia\u2013Volhynia (or the Kingdom of Rus\u2019), the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Commonwealth of Poland, and the Zaporozhian Sich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muscovy (the Grand Principality of Moscow) emerged in the late 13th century. In fact, the first case of official Russian-Ukrainian relations began with the Treaty of Pereyaslav and the March Articles of 1654. In essence, it was an act of Moscow’s Tsar protectorate over Ukraine, but in fact it turned into a roughly 340-year history of enslavement and national oppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin’s propagandists still see Ukrainians living in Imperial Russia, not in 21st-century Europe. Ukraine’s independence was restored in 1991. It is a civil nation with a Ukrainian ethnocultural and linguistic core, as well as distinct modern political history. The Kremlin uses the historical unity of the two peoples to justify the aggression against the Ukrainian people and the elimination of Ukrainian statehood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speakers: <\/p>\n\n\n\n