5 Brief Reasons Ukraine Does NOT Belong to Russia

Vladimir Putin now infamously claimed in his essay, “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” published in July 2021, that Ukraine belongs to Russia. He goes so far as to deny Ukraine any claim to nationhood and makes his intentions to integrate Ukraine into Russia clear.

But there are five big problems with Putin’s claims.

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

1. The Kievan Rus cannot be linked to Russia

Putin starts his historical revisionism with The Kievan Rus (862–1242), a loosely-collected political federation in modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia.

He claims that this heritage is shared and binds the nations together. This may be somewhat true, but it oversimplifies a complex past. But the problem is that there is no continuous line we can trace from this confederation to the Russian state.

The many empires that collided over the centuries that followed made that historical lineage nearly impossible to delineate.

So, no — the Kievan Rus does not bind Ukraine and Russia in any significant way.

2. Ukraine’s previous case for autonomy

Like many other European states, Ukraine first saw political autonomy after World War I with the…