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The territories of modern Ukraine are historically Russian, and Ukrainians and Russians are the same people, according to pro-Kremlin propaganda.
NEWS: The territories on which modern Ukraine is located are historically Russian, there was no Ukrainian state there, the leader of the “Another Ukraine” movement, the former president of the banned party in Ukraine “Opposition Platform - For Life”, Viktor Medvedchuk, writes in an article for aif.ru.
He recalled that the division between Russians and Ukrainians did not originally exist, “when Russia was divided between the Golden Horde and the West, in the form of the Grand Duchy of Poland and Lithuania”. “Yet the Polish occupation itself, which lasted much longer than the Tatar rule over Muscovy, did not form the Ukrainian ethnicity”, the politician states [...]
“There was Russia, Poland and Turkey with the Crimean Tatars”, Medvedchuk explained. “Therefore, saying that Ukrainians have always lived on their ancestral lands is the same as saying that Turks are the descendants of the ancient Greeks, and Egyptian Arabs are the descendants of ancient Egyptians”. Medvedchuk emphasized that “Russians and Ukrainians are the descendants of the same race”, and that “under the leadership of the Russian state, these territories were Russia’s for many centuries”.
NARRATIVES: 1. Ukraine never existed as a state and is located on the historical territories of Russia. 2. Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same people.
PURPOSE: To justify the invasion of Russia. To delegitimize Ukrainian statehood. To create internal divisions in Ukraine and undermine international support for it.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: In fact, the Kievan Rus of the 9th-12th centuries, as recalled by Viktor Medvedchuk, has nothing to do with the Russian Federation of today. It was a medieval Slavic state, centered in Kyiv, with an official language similar to Old Ukrainian. In the Slavic languages, the word “Rus” (Ruthenian, Eastern Slav), which refers to the period of Kievan Rus, means something other than the word “Russian”, i.e. a citizen of Russia or a representative of the Russian nation. The ancient Russians were a people which gave rise to three other peoples over the centuries: Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians.
After the Ukrainian Cossacks decided to join the Russian state to resist the anti-Orthodox pressure from the Polish-Lithuanian Union, Moscow started Russifying this segment of population. The existence of a strong Ukrainian national current is confirmed by the harsh measures taken by the Russians to suppress it, both in the 19th century, during the Tsarist Empire, and during the USSR, when the genocide known as the Holodomor was organized. The Empire’s intense Russification policy failed, however, to suppress the Ukrainian national identity.
Russian propaganda ignores a series of chapters in the history of the Ukrainian people up to the policy of forced Russification. Kyiv was documented in 482, while Moscow was first mentioned in documents almost 700 years later, in 1147. Ukraine only really came under Moscow's control towards the end of the 18th century, during the reign of Catherine II -a, and not even then was Russian Empire able to easily assimilate it.
Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was forced to create the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after occupying Ukraine to appease spirits following the Russian-Ukrainian War of 1917-1920. In the context of the Bolshevik revolution, the Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed in Kyiv in 1918, which had diplomatic ties with a number of states, including Romania. The new Ukrainian state was conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1920. Fearing the strong nationalist trends in the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks approved in 1923 a doctrine of indigenization of power in the new republics, giving Ukrainians broad cultural autonomy alongside total ideological control.
Ukrainians have a distinct national identity, with their own culture, history and language. Also, the territories that today are part of Ukraine were in the past part of various states and empires, such as Poland, Romania, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. In addition, Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, a process confirmed by a national referendum. It is also important to note that Ukraine is recognized by the international community as a sovereign state with the right to determine its own political and historical course.
BACKGROUND: Viktor Medvedchuk has been a leader of various pro-Kremlin political projects in Ukraine and is a personal friend of Vladimir Putin, who is godfather to one of his daughters. Arrested on charges of treason by Ukrainian authorities, Medvedchuk was handed over to Moscow in September 2022 in a prisoner exchange. Since then, the Kremlin has been using Medvedchuk to make propaganda more credible. He doesn’t live in Ukraine and does not lead any officially registered political organization.
Veridica has dismantled a series of false narratives discrediting the Ukrainian state project. The Russian press also wrote that Ukrainians are occupiers of their own country, and Russia is waging a just war to save Russian speakers and the Russian culture from the Nazi threat. According to pro-Kremlin propaganda, Ukrainians and Russians are the same people, and Russia is waging a holy war.
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