Ukraine's origin. Deep, comprehensive explanation.
The history of modern Ukraine dates back to the 9th to 10th century - the century of the emergence of Kievan Orthodox Russia,
In the 11th to 12th century this state weakened and disintegrated into small specific principalities, and by the 13th to 15th century such large states as Lithuania, Catholic Poland and the Golden Horde conquer Kievan Rus and it ceases to exist as an independent sovereign state.
For your information, Poland became Catholic from the 10th century, Lithuania remained Orthodox for many years, the Lithuanian lords switched from Orthodoxy to Catholicism only in 1389 and after this moment started to enforce its population to convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. Thus on the Orthodox lands of Kievan Rus that Poland and Lithuania conquered from 1325 to 1654, strong persecution of the Orthodox faith began, Catholicism and the use of the Polish language were forcibly planted.
Despite the persecution of the Orthodox faith, the forcible planting of Catholicism and the Polish language on these lands, most of the population retained Orthodoxy, but at the same time the language began to change and turned into a kind of hybrid of Russian and Polish, which later became known as the Ukrainian dialect of the Russian language, now it is modern Ukrainian language.
After the adoption by the Polish-Lithuanian state of the Commonwealth of the Brest Union in 1596, which legalized the union of the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church on its lands, many Russian lords in these lands began to convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. This intensified the persecution of the Orthodox faith and the Russian language. But the majority of the general population was unhappy with such a forced change of faith and therefore fled south to the lands in the lower reaches of the Dnieper River, where Zaporzhie Sitch or also known as Cassacks Ukraine was formed.
During the period from the 13th century to the 17th century is a restoration of historical Orthodox Russia happened with its capital in Moscow, which in the following centuries became the successor of ancient Kievan Rus and the defender of Orthodoxy. In 1480 the Mongol-Tatar yoke was crushed. The new Orthodox Russia, with its capital in Moscow, gained sovereignty. After that, Moscow quickly begins to grow stronger and get back all its hereditary lands of ancient Kievan Orthodox Russia. All countries of that time in their historical documents also call this state Muscovy, which later became modern Russia.
After the Union of Lublin in 1569 united Lithuania and Poland into a single state - the Commonwealth and later the Brest Union in 1596, the persecution of Orthodoxy and the Russian language has increased significantly.
As a response, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the liberation movement seriously intensified among the Orthodox Russian population, who lived along the banks of the Dnieper River. The turning point was the events of the time of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. His supporters tried to achieve autonomy from the Commonwealth.
The petition of Hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky to the king of the Commonwealth in 1649 spoke about the observance of the rights of the Russian Orthodox population, but The Polish leadership denied these people their requests.
Therefore, Bogdan Khmelnitsky turned to Moscow. On October 1, 1653, the Zemsky Sobor (parliament) of Russia decided to support fellow believers and take them under protection. In January 1654, the Pereyaslav Rada (local parliament of Cassacks Ukraine) confirmed this decision.
Therefore, the year 1654 became very significant for the history of Ukraine in that this is the first mention in historical documents about the origins of modern Ukraine, as a territorial entity, fixed by the Pereyaslav Rada, the transition of Zaporzhie Sitch or also known as Cassacks Ukraine under the protectorate of the Moscow Tsar. But at that time, the name "Ukraine" was used in the sense of the region, as the old Russian word "okraina", that is, the extreme region, the region of Russia in the border areas. And the word "Ukrainian or Cassack" originally meant border service people who provided protection for external borders.
This motivated a war between Russia and Poland. It ended with the victory of Russia and the Andrusovsky truce of 1667. The final results were fixed by the "Eternal Peace" of 1686. The city of Kyiv and the lands of the left bank of the Dnieper River, including Poltava and Chernihiv regions, returned to Russia.
Their inhabitants reunited with the main part of the Russian Orthodox people. Behind this region itself, the name was established - "Little Russia" (Mala-Russia). Orthodox residents from the right bank of the Dnieper began to move here en masse, dissatisfied with Poland's forcible coercion into Catholicism and poor living conditions for Orthodox believers. They sought support from people of the same Orthodox faith and the same language.
Thus during the 14th to 17th centuries after devastating wars from Poland and Lithuania, and by the end of the 17th century these territories were divided into two halves along the Dnieper River: the left-bank lands (including the Donbass) went to revived Orthodox Russia with its capital in Moscow, and the right-bank Lands (and these are modern Lviv, Vinnitsa) went to Poland with its capital in Warsaw.
After several partitions of Poland from 1772 to 1795, the territories of the Right-Bank Ukraine, Volyn and Podolia also became part of the Russian Empire, and in 1775 Zaporzhie Sitch or Cassacks Ukraine ceased to exist.
After the Russian-Turkish wars of 1768-1783, Crimea and the Southern lands became part of the Russian Empire. New provinces were formed and the cities of Yekaterinoslav, Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson, Sevastopol, Aleksandrovsk, Mariupol were founded.
In 1917, a socialist revolution took place in the Russian Empire, led by the German agent, fanatic and dictator Vladimir Lenin. The revolution led to chaos and further to the Civil War throughout the Russian Empire. As a result of the Civil War, power was in the hands of the dictator Lenin, and he formed the USSR.
Before the Revolution of 1917, the right bank of the Dnieper River modern Ukraine’s lands for a long time were part of Poland and underwent strong Polish assimilation (Polish language plus Catholicism planting). Over the years from the 13th-18th centuries of Poland's influence, people here have already become mostly Catholics and their language has become a mixture of Russian and Polish, actually the modern Ukrainian language.
The second part of modern Ukraine was the lands on the left side of the Dnieper River and for many years was part of Russia, so called Little Russia (Malorussia). These were three provinces - Chernihiv, Poltava and Kharkov. These were regions that were part of Russia for several centuries and were inextricably linked with it, the language here was purely Russian and the Orthodox faith.
Before 1917 the rest present-day Ukraine’s southern regions Ukraine actually never entered the lands of modern Ukraine, but were always part of Russia. These territories joined illegally to Ukraine only in the Soviet era by the fanatical and dictatorial leaders of the USSR. These lands were even used to informally called Novorussia (modern Crimea, Donbass, Dnieper, Mariupol, Nikolaev, Kherson, Odessa).
The dictator and fanatic Lenin, who was later discovered to be a secret agent of German intelligence, called himself leader of world revolution and wanted to capture the whole world, treated the interests of Russia extremely dismissively. He was ready to sacrifice them for any tactical advantage, regarding Russia as something of a bargaining chip worth paying for kindling the fire of world revolution. according to Lenin, national feelings were allowed to the Soviet Ukrainian leaders, who demanded the inclusion of Donbass in Soviet Ukraine, but in no way were allowed to the Russians. Therefore, in order to maintain good relations with Soviet Ukraine, dictator Lenin in 1922 personally transferred to Soviet Ukraine’s administrative subordination such historical Russian lands as the Donbass and the Lugansk region.
During the subsequent years of Soviet union, multiple historically Russian regions and cities such as Kharkov, Chernigov, Poltava, Mariupol, Odessa were transfered to Soviet Ukraine. And Crimea, conquered by Russia from Turkey back in 1783, was annexed to Soviet Ukraine only in 1954 by the personal order of the dictator and fanatic Nikita Khrushchev, who arranged for the United States the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 which almost led to a world nuclear war. Historians, having studied Khrushchev's personal archive, have reported that he transferred the Crimea from Russia to Soviet Ukraine as a birthday present for his wife, Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk, who, it turned out, adhered to ultra-right Ukrainian nationalist ideas. No one asked the opinion of people living in Crimea at that time.
Modern Ukraine declared Ukrainian independence from Russia in 1991, but Ukraine did not return to Russia its historical territories that were part of Russia until 1917 and which were illegally transferred to Soviet Ukraine by fanatics and dictators during the Soviet Union.