Isn't Ukraine a separatist province?

February 20, 2022 thread

Isn't Ukraine just a separatist Russian province? Many foreigners ask themselves this question. The same way many Eastern Slavs think that all British Isles are just England. And yet, dynamics of Russian-Ukrainian relations are different from the dynamics of Anglo-Celtic ones🧵

To start with, both Russia and Ukraine were initially shaped by the Slavic Expansion. That's one possible theory of how it went, there are many. And yet, it's highly likely that the colonisation of what is now Russia initially went largely from what is now Ukraine

You see the direction of Slavic expansion on this map of Uralic languages. There's a huge empty space between Baltic Finns in the West and Volga Finns + Siberian Uralics in the East. Finnic people used to live here, but were wiped out or assimilated during the Slavic Expansion

Central Russia was colonised by Slavs from Ukraine and Belarus, who wiped out Finnic and Baltic natives. The town of Moscow was first mentioned in a chronicle which described the expedition against Baltic golyad tribe in 1147. Now nothing remains from those guys except toponyms

Another factor which shaped the history of the region was the Viking (Varangian) invasion of the 9-10th centuries. Vikings entered Slavic lands by rivers, sailed upstream and pushed deep inland establishing their rule. Slavs called them 'Rus'. Probably a borrowed Finnic word

Soon Vikings discovered they can get from the Baltic to the Mediterranean using inland waterways. Enter the mouth of Neva and then through Ladoga, Volkhov, Ilmen and Lovat sail south. Do a portage to the Dnieper and sail downstream all the way to the Black Sea and Constantinople