To understand the cataclysm of the 2022 invasion, one must journey back through a millennium of shared, and often painful, history between Ukraine and Russia. Their relationship is not a simple story of two separate neighbors, but a deeply entangled saga of kinship, domination, and a relentless struggle for identity. It is a history that Vladimir Putin has weaponized to justify war, and one that Ukrainians invoke to defend their very existence as a sovereign nation.
This story begins not in Moscow, but in Kyiv.
The Cradle of Civilizations: Kievan Rus’ and the Mongol Invasions
In the 9th century, a powerful Slavic state emerged with its capital in Kyiv: Kievan Rus’. This federation of principalities, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, was the birthplace of Eastern Slavic civilization. It adopted Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium in 988, an event that forever shaped the region’s cultural and religious landscape.
For Ukrainians, this is the foundational chapter of their nationhood. Kyiv was the heart, the “mother of Rus’ cities.” The historical narrative that modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all descend from Kievan Rus’ is accurate, but it is here that the first critical divergence in interpretation occurs. The Russian imperial narrative, later adopted by the USSR and now fervently promoted by Putin, posits that Russians are the sole, direct heirs to Kyivan Rus’, and that Ukrainians are merely a branch of the Russian people—”Little Russians” who lost their way.
This is a central pillar of Putin’s justification for the war: the idea that Ukraine is not a real country but a historical part of Russia, artificially carved out by political mistakes. For Ukrainians, their descent from Kyivan Rus’ is proof of a distinct and ancient lineage that predates the existence of the Russian state itself, which coalesced around the northern principality of Moscow much later.
The fragmentation of Kyivan Rus’ after the 13th-century Mongol invasions set the two peoples on different paths. The northeastern principalities (including Moscow) fell under Mongol rule (the “Tatar Yoke”), which heavily influenced the development of a centralized, autocratic Russian state. Meanwhile, the lands of modern-day Ukraine were absorbed by other powers: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Kingdom of Poland. For centuries, the historical and cultural development of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples diverged significantly.
The Cossack Hetmanate and the Subjugation by the Russian Empire
In the 16th and 17th centuries, a new force emerged on the Ukrainian steppes: the Cossacks. These free, warrior communities, particularly the Zaporozhian Host, became symbols of Ukrainian independence and resistance against Polish domination.
In 1648, led by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Cossacks launched a major uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Seeking a powerful ally, Khmelnytsky signed the Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654 with the Tsardom of Moscow. This fateful decision is another pivotal point of contention. The Russian narrative frames it as the “reunification” of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. The Ukrainian interpretation is far more nuanced, viewing it as a military alliance that Moscow later betrayed, gradually eroding the Hetmanate’s autonomy and absorbing its territories.
By the late 18th century, following the partitions of Poland, the Russian Empire had swallowed most of modern Ukraine. The empire pursued a ruthless policy of Russification. The Ukrainian language was suppressed by decrees like the 1876 Ems Ukaz, which banned its use in print. The unique history of Ukraine was rewritten to fit the imperial narrative of a tripartite Russian nation (Great Russian, Little Russian, and White Russian). The very name “Ukraine,” which means “borderland” or “country,” was discouraged in favor of the derogatory “Little Russia.” This was a centuries-long project of cultural erasure designed to smother a separate Ukrainian identity.
The Soviet Era: Famine, Terror, and False Promises
The 20th century brought unimaginable suffering, cementing deep trauma in the Ukrainian national consciousness. After a brief period of independence following the Russian Revolution (1917-1921), Ukraine was conquered by the Bolsheviks and forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union.
The most devastating event was the Holodomor (“death by hunger”) of 1932-33. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s policy of forced collectivization seized grain and food from Ukrainian farms to feed industrial cities and export for profit. The resulting man-made famine killed millions of Ukrainians. Coupled with a campaign of terror against the Ukrainian intelligentsia and clergy, it was an act of genocide, designed to break the backbone of Ukrainian peasant resistance and national identity.
Later, World War II ravaged the country, and the post-war Soviet period continued the policy of Russification while also drawing Ukraine closer economically and politically. In a cynical move, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred the Crimean Peninsula from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954, a largely symbolic act within a single state that would have profound consequences decades later.
The Chornobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 became the ultimate symbol of the Soviet state’s disregard for the Ukrainian people and its environment. The botched response and attempts to cover up the catastrophe exposed the fatal flaws of the Soviet system and galvanized the Ukrainian independence movement.
The Orange Revolution and the Maidan: The Final Breach
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence. The early post-Soviet years were defined by economic hardship, rampant corruption, and a delicate balancing act between a pro-European West and a pro-Russian East.
Two pivotal revolutions demonstrated Ukraine’s irreversible westward pivot and set the stage for future conflict.
- The Orange Revolution (2004): This was a massive, peaceful protest movement against a fraudulent presidential election victory by the pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. It resulted in a new vote and the victory of the pro-Western candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. For the first time, modern Ukraine showed its collective will for a democratic, European future, directly challenging the Kremlin’s desired influence.
- The Revolution of Dignity (Maidan) (2013-2014): This was the point of no return. President Yanukovych, under intense pressure from Putin, abruptly backed out of a major association agreement with the European Union, opting for closer ties with Russia instead. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians poured into Kyiv’s Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) in protest. After months of demonstrations and a violent crackdown by state security forces that killed over 100 protesters, Yanukovych fled to Russia.
The Maidan was a definitive rejection of Russia’s orbit and its model of authoritarian, kleptocratic rule. For Putin, it was a “western-sponsored coup” that installed a hostile government on Russia’s border. For Ukrainians, it was a bloody sacrifice for the right to choose their own destiny. Putin’s response was swift and brutal: the illegal annexation of Crimea and the fomenting of a proxy war in the Donbas region, which claimed over 14,000 lives between 2014 and early 2022.
Conclusion: The Weight of History
The history of Ukraine and Russia is one of intertwined origins followed by centuries of imperial domination, cultural suppression, and violent subjugation. The Soviet era added layers of trauma through famine and totalitarian control. The post-Soviet period revealed a fundamental divergence in values: Ukraine’s repeated, hard-fought choice for democracy and Europe clashed directly with Putin’s revanchist vision of a restored Russian sphere of influence.
Putin’s 2022 invasion is the violent culmination of this history. It is an attempt to force by military might what centuries of political and cultural pressure failed to achieve: the extinguishing of the Ukrainian state and the reabsorption of its people into a Russian-dominated world. But in doing so, he has fundamentally misread the very history he claims to uphold. The centuries of oppression did not erase Ukrainian identity; they forged it into an unbreakable will to be free. The war is not just a battle over territory; it is the final, tragic chapter in a long struggle between an empire determined to control and a nation determined to exist.