We have all heard Vladimir Putin’s repeated claims to Ukraine’s land. In his now-infamous essay, “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” published in July 2021, Putin goes so far to deny Ukraine any claim to nationhood and makes his intentions to integrate Ukraine into Russia very clear.

It is now even more relevant to make this case for Ukrainian sovereignty, as pundits like Candace Owens, among others, have been swallowing Putin’s propaganda and proclaiming it to millions of keen listeners.

To be fair, maybe some of us have also wondered whether Putin’s claims are, at least partially, correct. We remember stories of the Kievan Rus and how empires collided on Ukrainian territory. When we hear the Ukrainian language in the news, we hear its phonetic similarity to Russian. They share the Cyrillic alphabet, Azbuka. Their economies are integrated. Many Russians have families in Ukraine. So, we may wonder to ourselves, to what extent are Ukraine and Russia historically linked?

Putting aside questions of language, in this article, I would like to focus on a brief historical retelling of Ukrainian’s recent history and why Putin is horribly wrong in his historical revisionism.

Ukraine and Russia indeed share a history. But their history is not as unique as Putin implies. In fact, Ukraine also shares an extensive history with Poland. And few are suggesting that Poland has a right to take back Lviv, for example, a city that was once a part of its empire.

Putin starts his historical revisionism with The Kievan Rus (862–1242), a loosely-collected political federation in modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia. Its capital, Kyiv, finally fell to the Mongol Invasion which crippled much of Eastern Europe in the 13th century. Putin claims that this heritage is shared and binds the nations together. This may be somewhat true, but it oversimplifies a complex past. Indeed, in the words of the historian Matthew E. Lenoe, “there’s no continuous line to be traced from this loose river confederation to the Russian state.” The many empires that collided over the centuries that followed made that historical lineage nearly impossible to delineate.

It may be true that both Russia and Ukraine are predominantly Slavic nations located east of the Carpathian mountains. And for some of their recent history, from the 17th century onwards, many traversed from Moscow to Kyiv, and vice versa, to emigrate, study at universities, and engage in political disputes. Crimea and Odesa were common vacation spots for Russians in the summer, luring in many Russian tzars with the warmth of the Black Sea. And Russian cities as far east as Vladivostok and Khabarovsk saw significant Ukrainian migration in the 20th century.

“[T]here’s no continuous line to be traced from this loose river confederation to the Russian state.” — Matthew E. Lenoe

So, from the 17th century, by geographic and political necessity, their pasts have been connected. However, their language, culture, literature, and politics significantly diverged before then. Indeed, Kyiv has a much longer history than Moscow and had a thousand years of history before developing any intimate bonds with the Russian capital.

As many others have noted, Kyiv was a booming city at a time when Moscow only resembled a humble village. And, more alarmingly, Ukraine and its people were the recipients of Russian wrath throughout much of the 20th century. If we look at history, we see that the only time Russia had any grasp over Ukraine was when it used force.

Early Stages of Ukrainian Resistance

Like many other European states, Ukraine first saw political autonomy after World War I with the founding of the Ukraine People’s Republic, in 1917. After establishing its autonomy, the Bolsheviks, which at the time were swiftly becoming the ruling political party in Russia, entered a war with Ukraine over its borders and territory.

In 1921, the Bolsheviks finally consolidated their control over Ukrainian resistance and integrated Ukraine into its newly-formed Soviet Union. Putin, and others who view this period of Ukrainian resistance as irrelevant to their history, are ignoring how the Kremlin treated Ukrainians in the years that followed.

After Ukraine was integrated into the USSR, Joseph Stalin sought to destabilize any Ukrainian hope of becoming a sovereign state again. He, therefore, enforced agricultural policies that would (1) help Russia feed its people in light of growing demand and (2) prevent Ukrainization and political upheaval in Ukrainian territory. The Great Ukrainian Famine (1932–1933), also known as the Holodomor, was one of the most palpable and extreme forms of immediate aggression Ukraine felt, following the slaughter the Bolsheviks inflicted on citizens of the Ukraine People’s Republic from 1917–1919. The Ukrainian parliament only managed to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people in 2006.

Most historians agree with depicting the Holodomor as ethnonational genocide because of strong evidence that Stalin’s policies had an “ethnonational coloration,” in the words of the historian Serhii Plokhy. In his book, The Gates of Europe, Plokhy explains that “[the Holodomor] left Ukrainian society severely traumatized, crushing its capacity for open resistance to the regime for generations to come.” Therefore, Ukraine’s early stages of integration did not come without great cost to the Ukrainian people. Ukraine’s political autonomy in 1917, was met with slaughter and subsequent famine that killed an estimated 7–10 million people, according to a joint statement by the United Nations.

During World War II, Ukraine became a battlefield for Axis and Soviet Allied forces. Many Ukrainians fought alongside Russians in some of the most deadly battles in World War II, from Stalingrad, Moscow, Kharkiv, to Kursk. Four Ukrainian cities were known as “hero cities” in the USSR due to the great casualties the German forces caused there (Odesa, Sevastopol, Kyiv, and Kerch). More than 7 million Ukrainians lost their lives throughout World War II, including citizens, which added up to 15 percent of Ukraine’s population at the time.

After World War II, the size of Ukraine increased by 15 percent, but at what cost? 10 million Ukrainians were left without a roof over their heads. More than 40 percent of Ukraine’s wealth and 80 percent of its industrial and agricultural equipment were lost.

Leading up to the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine also experienced the single biggest nuclear disaster in the world, at the nuclear power plant, Chernobyl, in 1986. On closer inspection, we once again see that it was largely due to poor policies issued by the Kremlin that the powerplant malfunctioned.

Some Ukrainian officials were indeed invited to Moscow to consult policymakers, but their input fell on deaf ears. Chernobyl exposed at least 3 million people to radiation, amassing radiation comparable to the explosion of five hundred Hiroshima bombs. The landmass of Belgium across Ukraine and Belarus was contaminated and many had to flee their homes never to return. Here, once again, we see the Kremlin’s self-interest and brutal ambivalence over Ukraine and its people.

Despite these events, Putin has repeatedly claimed that Ukraine was the main benefactor of the fall of the Soviet Union. But this is far from the case. Ukraine paid dearly by the forceful integration of the Ukraine People’s Republic into the USSR. By the end of the millennium, only around 2 or 3 percent of the population had lives they were comfortable with. And more than half of Ukrainians could barely afford food. If anything, we could argue that it was Russia that was the main benefactor of these tremendous losses in Ukraine. In the words of the historian Dominic Lieven, “Without Ukraine’s population, industry and agriculture, early-20th-century Russia would have ceased to be a great power.”

By briefly looking at history, we see that Ukraine was greatly impoverished and wronged at the hands of Russia. Yet, Putin still aims to take hold of Ukraine.

Resistance Today

Fast forward a few decades and Ukraine still faces corruption and political unrest due to the instability the USSR left them. Upon Viktor Yanukovych’s removal as President of Ukraine in 2014, after the Maidan Revolution which claimed the lives of 121 citizens, Putin’s influence over Ukraine waned. Yanukovych was easy to manipulate due to his public proclivity for corruption. Putin took advantage of this and supported Yanukovych in 2004 and 2010 and ultimately granted him asylum in 2014.

Taking further advantage of the tumultuous state Ukraine was in, Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. The annexation of the Crimean peninsula had unexpected results, however. It drew much of Ukraine closer to the West. Donetsk and Luhansk became warzones with Russian-backed separatists destabilizing the regions.

The United Kingdom and the United States, among other world-leading economies, began investing large amounts into Ukraine’s military. Its forces were much stronger and better equipped than the military Russia faced in 2014. Putin knew this and after many years of consideration began amassing large swaths of troops on Ukraine’s border with Belarus and Russia. Finally, Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Since the invasion, any semblance of control has been difficult to establish. The Ukrainian army has trumped most of the world’s expectations — especially Putin’s. It is now increasingly apparent that Putin must come to terms with the fact that Ukraine will never belong to Russia.

Summary

From the time of the Kievan Rus until now, Ukraine had a tumultuous history. Many nationalities and ethnicities from the Khazars, Cossacks, Vikings, to the Mongols, Poles, and Lithuanians, to name but a few, all collided here. It is therefore very difficult to trace any coherent line between these nations, let alone make injunctions based on them that would justify annexing sovereign states. If we were to do so, we would have to question many of the borders in Europe — and, moreover, the world.

Ukraine’s recent history is riddled with injustices inflicted on it by Russia. Putin’s claims to Ukrainian lands are therefore not only unfounded but put to international attention Russia’s moral accountability to Ukraine and the necessity of paying significant reparations to Ukraine for its long history of aggression toward its people.

Both Stalin and Hitler sought to claim the breadbasket of Europe for themselves which resulted in the death of millions. Today, Putin is aiming to do the same. And it is now clear that Putin, too, must learn the hard way that Ukrainians value their sovereignty more than life itself.

This article was originally published on Disinfowatch.

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