Discussions, post-mortems, analysis, inflated egos, and all that jazz.

Don't we have moderators anymore? Or is it okay now to engage in inciting ethnic hatred and making direct personal insults in one paragraph? Especially towards characters who historically never had any state other than the Russian one. Kyiv is the mother of all Russian cities, an originally Russian city and territory of the Russian Empire. And the Dnieper is the same: "In the decree of Catherine II dated January 22, 1784, it says: 'For the sake of convenience, the provincial city called Yekaterinoslav should be located on the right bank of the Dnieper River near Kaidak…'". So, who stole what from whom?))

Dude, you've got mush for brains. Of course, it didn't exist; Kyiv Rus' and the Hetmanate were not states in the Heroes of Might and Magic sense. Regarding the city, almost everything is correct, except it wasn't a "Russian" city, but a Ruthenian city. Rus' is Ukraine. The Greeks-Byzantines pronounced the name Rus' as Ru'ssia, and the Latins as Ruthenia. The inhabitants of this state were called Ruthenians or Ruthenes. The name of the country was also widely known by its natural, true name – Rus'. At the same time, the name Ukraine was also used. However, the name Rus' – as Russia – gained the greatest popularity in the world, especially in modern times, starting in the 18th century, and the reason for this was its adoption as the new name of the Moscow Tsardom, which was being actively rebuilt and expanded at that time by Tsar Peter I, creating an empire. The Moscow Tsar wanted, at all costs, to establish himself in the world and, in particular, to change the attitude of the old European states towards him. Under Peter I, the Moscow Tsardom was renamed and began to be called "Russia" (Russia), when he first, as if incognito, traveled to Europe, where he was not received by any royal court, although he attended balls with dignitaries. Simply put, Moscow was not known at that time, and it was considered an Asian country. And there was a negative attitude towards Asians. Rus' was known for a long time. That is why, upon returning from Europe, the Moscow Tsar renamed his tsardom, and the Muscovites first learned that they were Great Russians (later, Russians). It was "Russia" that Peter I began to call his empire. And it began to be called Russia only later – perhaps under the influence of the name of the river now familiar to Russians, or some tribe called the Ros', and not vice versa, as some Russian historians later began to claim, or perhaps because, due to the peculiarities of their anatomy and articulation, it is easier for "Russians" to pronounce the word "Russia" than the unfamiliar "Rus'." It also helped Moscow that the Ukrainian lands – Rus' (and Ukraine was known in the West only as Rus') were already under Moscow's control. Great Russians are the only people in the world who, until the beginning of the 18th century, did not have their own name, but were called the Moscow people. At the same time, the term Little Russians (later, Little Russians) began to be applied to Ukrainians-Ruthenians. By changing the ethnonym, Peter I hoped not only to destroy the sense of separateness of Ukrainians and Belarusians in relation to Muscovites in this way, but also to make the latter more receptive to European civilization. His followers acted in the same way, in particular Catherine II. In simple terms, Peter the First rewrote history, carrying out a substitution of original concepts, who is who. The use of the name of a neighboring state – Rus' – as its own name and its distortion to the name Russia led to the emergence of, perhaps, one of the greatest myths in world history.