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To: Chad C. Mulligan
Do not believe that Ukraine was ever an "integral part of Russia". Kievan Rus' was a going concern long before Moscow even existed.

President Putin never said Moscow founded Ukraine.   He said the opposite.   He said that Kievan Rus founded Russia and they thus were the same land and culture.

This is from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Kievan Rus, first East Slavic state. It reached its peak in the early to mid-11th century.

Both the origin of the Kievan state and that of the name Rus, which came to be applied to it, remain matters of debate among historians. According to the traditional account presented in The Russian Primary Chronicle, it was founded by the Viking Oleg, ruler of Novgorod from about 879. In 882 he seized Smolensk and Kiev, and the latter city, owing to its strategic location on the Dnieper River, became the capital of Kievan Rus. Extending his rule, Oleg united local Slavic and Finnish tribes, defeated the Khazars, and, in 911, arranged trade agreements with Constantinople.

Oleg’s successor, Igor, is regarded as the founder of the Rurik dynasty, but he was a less-capable ruler than Oleg, and the treaty that he concluded with Constantinople in 945 featured terms that were less favourable than those that had been obtained in 911. In his writings, Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus described trade practices in Kievan Rus at that time. During winter the Kievan princes made circuits among neighbouring tribes to collect tribute, which consisted of furs, money, and slaves. As spring came, they loaded their goods into small boats and moved them down the Dnieper in convoy to discourage attacks by nomadic steppe tribes. Their ultimate destination was Constantinople, where their rights of trading were strictly defined by treaty. Igor’s son Svyatoslav was the last of the Kievan princes to adhere to Scandinavian traditions, and with the ascent of Vladimir I (Volodymyr) in 980, the Rurik line was thoroughly Slavonized. It still preserved its connections with other parts of Europe, however, and it ruled a large territory that stretched from the northern lakes to the steppe and from the then uncertain Polish frontier to the Volga and the Caucasus.

Vladimir’s reign heralded the beginning of the golden age of Kievan Rus, but that era’s brilliance rested on an unsteady base, as the connection between the state and its subject peoples remained loose. The only link unifying the subdued tribes was the power of the grand duke of Kiev. The people paid tribute to the prince’s tax collectors, but they were otherwise left almost entirely to themselves and were thus able to preserve their traditional structures and habits. One development of enormous importance during Vladimir’s reign was his acceptance of the Orthodox Christian faith in 988. The conversion was born of a pact with Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who promised his sister’s hand in marriage in exchange for military aid and the adoption of Christianity by the Kievan state. After traditional religious practices were suppressed in Kiev and Novgorod, the Byzantine rite was propagated throughout Vladimir’s domain. Although the religion came from Constantinople, the service was in the vernacular, as the Bible had been translated into Old Church Slavonic by the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century.

As you see above the Vikings seized Smolensk and Kiev which had already existed.
This is right from Putin's paper published from the Kremlin:
Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes across the vast territory – from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov – were bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines our affinity today. Later, like other European states of that time, Ancient Rus faced a decline of central rule and fragmentation. At the same time, both the nobility and the common people perceived Rus as a common territory, as their homeland.

The fragmentation intensified after Batu Khan's devastating invasion (grandson of Genghis Khan), which ravaged many cities, including Kiev. The northeastern part of Rus fell under the control of the Golden Horde but retained limited sovereignty. The southern and western Russian lands largely became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which – most significantly – was referred to in historical records as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia.


It so happened that Moscow became the center of reunification, continuing the tradition of ancient Russian statehood. Moscow princes – the descendants of Prince Alexander Nevsky – cast off the foreign yoke and began gathering the Russian lands.

In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, other processes were unfolding. In the 14th century, Lithuania's ruling elite converted to Catholicism. In the 16th century, it signed the Union of Lublin with the Kingdom of Poland to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish Catholic nobility received considerable land holdings and privileges in the territory of Rus. In accordance with the 1596 Union of Brest, part of the western Russian Orthodox clergy submitted to the authority of the Pope. The process of Polonization and Latinization began, ousting Orthodoxy.

In its 1649 appeal to the king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Zaporizhian Host demanded that the rights of the Russian Orthodox population be respected, that the voivode of Kiev be Russian and of Greek faith, and that the persecution of the churches of God be stopped. But the Cossacks were not heard.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky then made appeals to Moscow, which were considered by the Zemsky Sobor. On 1 October 1653, members of the supreme representative body of the Russian state decided to support their brothers in faith and take them under patronage. In January 1654, the Pereyaslav Council confirmed that decision. Subsequently, the ambassadors of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Moscow visited dozens of cities, including Kiev, whose populations swore allegiance to the Russian tsar. Incidentally, nothing of the kind happened at the conclusion of the Union of Lublin.

In a letter to Moscow in 1654, Bohdan Khmelnytsky thanked Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich for taking ”the whole Zaporizhian Host and the whole Russian Orthodox world under the strong and high hand of the Tsar“. It means that, in their appeals to both the Polish king and the Russian tsar, the Cossacks referred to and defined themselves as Russian Orthodox people.

The rest after that is oppressive European powers using Russian Slavs as pawns of factionalization. I want everu Ukrainian and every Russian to take a DNA test and then after the shock of their lives, go home, shut up and stop thei stupid civil war.

I am an ancestor of the same useless conflict here in the USA which still has repercussions in our lives today.   You Chad might take that to heart.

17 posted on 02/14/2024 4:21:47 PM PST by higgmeister (In the Shadow of The Big Chicken! )
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To: higgmeister

Don’t try to teach your grandmother how to steal sheep.

Read George Vernadsky’s history of Russia. Also “Russia and the Golden Horde” by Charles Halperin. And especially “Children of Rus” by Faith Hills. It’s not as simple as a Britannica article. Not at all.


19 posted on 02/14/2024 7:47:08 PM PST by Chad C. Mulligan
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To: higgmeister; Chad C. Mulligan; DUMBGRUNT; MeganC; tlozo; dennisw; BroJoeK; Monterrosa-24; ...

“As you see above the Vikings seized Smolensk and Kiev which had already existed.”

In that case Putin should be delighted that the Viking countries of Norway, Sweden, and Finland are now all united in NATO, so when he starts his war with NATO, he can scoop them all up in a bunch. s/


20 posted on 02/14/2024 11:29:30 PM PST by gleeaikin ( Question authority.)
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