Ukraine will take steps to research, publicize, and protect the histories of Ukrainians living in parts of modern-day Russia that have been historically inhabited by Ukrainians, according to a decree signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky on Jan. 22.
As someone born in the Russia, I support Zelensky looking at the old borders of the Kievan Rus.
From White to Black sea, Ukraine will be free
As someone who’s homeland is also being forcefully taken from underneath us, I love that that.
The problem is determining what from that period constitutes “Ukrainian” or “Russian”. The old “Rus peoples” were a lot of relatively different yet also similar groups, that homogenize and heterogenize across time depending on different political and social conditions, which at a certain point in time during the modern age some intellectuals try to categorize and end up reaching some sort of consensus with “Russian”, “Byelorussian” and “Ukrainian”.
In the end, forgetting this kind of nuance invites people who are a little shaky on the head to come up with pan-nationalist narratives that justify some sort of anachronistic imperialism. It’s already bad enough that Putin’s Z-morons are trying to appropriate Ukrainian identity as a breakaway of their own to justify ethnic cleansing, let’s not have some Ukrainians that try and do the same but in reverse.
It’s way easier when you have a look at Muscovy, which is the core of the so-called Russian empire. Also, how Muscovy made a huge rebranding effort to be called Russia, at the expense of Kiev.
The Russian imperialist narrative needs Kiev to be part of it precisely because that’s the origin of the very identity it stole. Without it there’s no grand history, no Orthodox legitimacy, just the history of being a Mongolian vassal.