Ukraine

The country whose existence Russian nationalism has repeatedly denied, and which has spent thirty years demonstrating otherwise. Kyiv was the centre of Kievan Rus, the polity all three eastern Slavic nations claim as an ancestor, and the argument over that inheritance is not academic - it is quoted in speeches justifying invasion. After the Mongols the lands passed to Lithuania and Poland, and the Cossack Hetmanate that emerged under Khmelnytsky in 1648 sought Russian protection at Pereiaslav in 1654, a treaty each side read differently and which Moscow later cited as permanent union. Imperial policy banned Ukrainian publishing outright in the 1860s and 1870s. Independence was declared in 1917 and lost by 1921. The Holodomor of 1932 and 1933, a famine produced by grain requisitioning and border closures, killed several million and is recognised as genocide by many states. The Second World War was fought across the country twice, with the Jewish population murdered almost entirely at Babyn Yar and elsewhere. Independence came in 1991 by referendum with over ninety per cent in favour, including majorities in every region. Russia annexed Crimea and fomented war in the Donbas in 2014, and invaded in full in February 2022. Chornobyl is in the north. The country is among the world's largest grain exporters. Kyiv is the capital and Kharkiv, Odesa and Lviv the other large cities. The country is the largest wholly within Europe. Its black earth is among the most fertile soil anywhere. Ukrainian and Russian are closely related but not mutually intelligible in full.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history