Vladimir Putin insists Ukraine is not a real country. That its people are really Russians. That its state is not fully sovereign. That its boundaries are historical accidents. Russia's president has said this often. His reasoning evokes such an unadulterated imperialism of earlier centuries it is hard to see how a modern leader could be more overtly imperialist. But it is not just Putin. From what we can tell, many Russians think the same way. When, in the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin's reform-minded foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, talked of reintegrating Russia with former Soviet republics, it was Ukraine and Belarus he had in mind. For Kozyrev as for Putin, it was axiomatic that Russia's identity as a great power hinged on a hierarchical relationship with its post-Soviet neighbours, typically referred to as the “near abroad” by Russians to denote that these states were not properly “foreign” or sovereign. Russian control of Ukraine is an article of faith for many Russians, rooted in the idea that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. Held by nationalists, communists, and many liberals, this attitude towards Ukraine plainly exhibits Russia's imperial sense of self.

In the ninth century, adventurous Vikings calling themselves the “Rus” established riverine trade routes between Scandinavia and Byzantium. One of their greatest was on the mighty Dnieper River. A staging post, Kyiv evolved into the centre of a prosperous warrior kingdom. Kyivan Rus expanded over the next couple of centuries, at its peak extending from the Black Sea to the Baltic. In the late tenth century, its ruler, Prince Volodymyr (Vladimir in Russian) converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Under the leadership of Prince Yaroslav “the Wise”, Kyiv erected its own Santa Sofia cathedral in the eleventh century. Yaroslav's children were less than wise, however. They squabbled and fought internecine wars that divided the territory and weakened themselves.

The end came at the hands of the Mongols in the thirteenth century and it was here that the Rus became two or perhaps three peoples. Russian nationalists claim that when Kyiv fell, the Rus fled north to Muscovy and established there the successor to the Kyivan Rus. Ukrainian nationalists tell a different story, that the Rus remained in Kyiv and founded Ukraine. The truth is lost to history, but most likely some fled, and some stayed. More important was the fact that for the next 400 years, Kyivans and Muscovites lived in different political orbits.