From Kyivan Rus to Crimea: Historical Claims as Instruments of Modern War

Wars are never fought only on battlefields. They are waged also with words, myths and claims to the past. In the war between Russia and Ukraine, history has become a weapon as potent as artillery. Moscow’s leaders routinely invoke centuries-old narratives to justify invasion and annexation, while Ukrainians assert their own history of sovereignty to resist subjugation. Understanding these competing stories requires tracing the thread from the medieval polity of Kyivan Rus to the contested peninsula of Crimea.

The legacy of Kyivan Rus

Kyivan Rus emerged in the ninth century as a federation of Slavic and Scandinavian principalities centred on Kyiv, ruled by the Riurikid dynasty. The reign of Volodymyr the Great (980–1015) was decisive, for it consolidated the realm and introduced Christianity in 988, embedding Byzantine rites and literacy. Western historians such as Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard have emphasised that Kyivan Rus was not a proto-nation-state but a constellation of princely domains linked by dynastic ties, commerce, and religion.

For Ukrainians, Kyivan Rus is a foundational narrative of nationhood, establishing Kyiv as the spiritual and political heart of Eastern Slavdom. For Russians, the same polity is invoked as the origin of their statehood, with Moscow later inheriting its mantle. Yet scholars such as Serhii Plokhy stress that the historical record reveals divergence after the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century: Kyiv gravitated westwards towards Lithuania and Poland, while the north-eastern principalities developed under Mongol suzerainty before coalescing around Moscow. To speak of an unbroken Russian lineage from Kyivan Rus is therefore a retrospective invention, not a historical inevitability.

Imperial narratives

The Russian Empire codified this invention through official historiography. Writers such as Nikolai Karamzin portrayed Muscovy as the rightful heir of Kyiv, and Ukraine as “Little Russia”. This terminology, which denied the possibility of a separate Ukrainian polity, was an instrument of imperial domination rather than a neutral description.

Ukrainian traditions, however, resisted incorporation. The Zaporozhian Cossacks maintained semi-democratic institutions, while cultural figures such as Taras Shevchenko cultivated a distinct national literature. Western historians, notably Orest Subtelny, have argued that these currents nurtured a proto-national consciousness that survived beneath imperial overlays.

Crimea entered the imperial fold in 1783 when Catherine the Great annexed it from the Ottomans. Strategically, this secured Russia’s Black Sea presence, especially at Sevastopol. For Crimean Tatars, the indigenous majority, it marked dispossession and the beginning of mass migration. Historians such as Alan Fisher have shown how Tatar culture, long central to the peninsula, was marginalised in imperial narratives that portrayed Crimea as naturally Russian.

Soviet contradictions

The Soviet Union inherited imperial claims while proclaiming equality amongst republics. In theory, Ukraine was an equal partner; in practice, Moscow maintained dominance. Historians such as Terry Martin have noted that early “Ukrainisation” was swiftly curtailed by Stalin’s purges, which reasserted central control and persecuted cultural leaders.

Crimea epitomised Soviet arbitrariness. Khrushchev’s 1954 decision to transfer the peninsula to the Ukrainian SSR was framed as a symbolic gesture commemorating the 1654 Pereyaslav Treaty. At the time it carried little weight, but after 1991 it acquired profound significance. Russia’s later claim that this was a “mistake” neglects the fact that Moscow recognised Ukraine’s borders in multiple treaties after independence, including the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Post-Soviet reinterpretations

After 1991, Ukraine rooted her independence in the legacies of Kyivan Rus and the Cossack Hetmanate. Scholars such as Serhii Plokhy and Frank Sysyn underline that Ukraine’s modern statehood is not a Soviet accident but the continuation of distinct political traditions suppressed by empire. Russia, conversely, began to frame Ukraine as an artificial construct, arguing that Crimea’s 1954 transfer lacked legitimacy.

Putin’s 2014 annexation speech invoked both Kyivan Rus and Catherine the Great. He declared Russians and Ukrainians to be “one people” and presented Crimea as eternally Russian. This selective appropriation ignored centuries of Tatar presence and the peninsula’s cosmopolitan history. Historians in the West, from Andrew Wilson to Timothy Snyder, have underscored that such rhetoric is myth-making, not historical scholarship.

History in Russian state media since 2014

Russian state media since 2014 has relentlessly propagated these narratives. Television documentaries link Putin with Volodymyr’s baptism at Chersonesus, portraying the seizure of Crimea as a spiritual homecoming. School textbooks revised in the mid-2010s present Ukraine as an estranged branch of “historical Russia”, torn away by hostile foreign powers. Commemorations of Catherine the Great and the Second World War are used to present territorial expansion as liberation. The past becomes a justification for present violence.

The Ukrainian counter-narrative

Ukraine has responded with her own historical storytelling. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, under Volodymyr Viatrovych and his successors, reframed the state as heir to Kyivan Rus and the Hetmanate. Educational reforms emphasised Ukraine’s distinct path and the role of the Crimean Tatars as an indigenous people. Museums curated exhibitions on the 1944 deportations, countering Russian erasure of Tatar suffering.

President Zelensky has invoked Kyivan Rus in speeches, linking Kyiv’s endurance during medieval invasions with modern resistance to Russian assault. Ukrainian filmmakers and artists have drawn on national symbols to reinforce identity and unity. In this way, history has been mobilised not only for defence abroad but also for cohesion at home.

Western historical scholarship

Western historians caution against conflating medieval polities with modern nations. Franklin and Shepard emphasise that Kyivan Rus was a federation of princely domains, not the embryo of a single state. Subtelny and Plokhy highlight Ukraine’s persistent distinctiveness, while Snyder stresses the dangers of imperial narratives that overwrite local histories.

On Crimea, scholarship emphasises multiplicity. Fisher documents the centrality of the Crimean Khanate and Tatar identity, while Brian Williams notes that Crimea’s demography has been shaped by waves of conquest, migration, and deportation. From this perspective, to label Crimea as “eternally Russian” is untenable. The peninsula’s history is better understood as a palimpsest of overlapping sovereignties.

The battlefield of memory

Today, Russia weaponises history to sanctify conquest, while Ukraine invokes it to affirm sovereignty. Western scholarship, by contrast, stresses complexity, contingency and plural inheritance. It rejects deterministic claims, recognising that Kyivan Rus and Crimea cannot be monopolised by any single state.

The deeper truth is that history is not destiny but interpretation. Russia manipulates memory to mask aggression; Ukraine defends the right to narrate her own past. In this struggle Western historians offer a reminder that history is not a title deed but a contested space, where truth must be defended against myth.

Conclusion

From Kyivan Rus to Crimea, history has been conscripted into war. Russian narratives present inevitability, Ukrainian narratives insist upon resilience, and Western scholarship restores nuance. What matters ultimately is not whose ancestors once ruled where, but the right of today’s peoples to self-determination. For Ukraine, that right encompasses both territory and memory. In the contest between myth and sovereignty, it is this right that stands at the centre of Europe’s struggle for peace.