Ukraine Between Empires: A Thousand Years of Strategic Geography
- Matthew Parish
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
For more than a millennium, Ukraine has existed at the crossroads of empires, cultures and ideologies — a vast and fertile plain bounded by rivers, forests, and steppes, repeatedly drawn into the gravitational pull of the great powers that surround it. From the days of Kyivan Rus to the 21st-century trenches of Donbas, Ukraine’s geography has been both a blessing and a curse: enabling trade, agriculture, and connectivity, but also exposing her to near-constant invasion and coercion.
This is not just a story of shifting borders. It is the story of how geography shapes destiny — and how a nation’s identity can be forged through resilience in the face of overwhelming pressure from without.
The Legacy of Kyivan Rus and the Mongol Rupture
Ukraine’s political and cultural origins trace back to Kyivan Rus, a powerful East Slavic federation that emerged in the 9th century around the city of Kyiv, situated advantageously on the Dnipro River. Stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, this entity acted as a bridge between Scandinavia and Byzantium, Christianising in 988 and laying the foundation for Eastern Slavic literacy, law and religious tradition.
But geography would soon invite destruction. In the 13th century the Mongol invasion swept across the steppe, shattering Kyivan Rus and dividing her successor states. The northern principalities — including what would become Moscow — came under Mongol suzerainty. The southwestern lands, including modern-day Ukraine, came under a different gravitational pull: that of Poland and Lithuania.
The Polish-Lithuanian Era and the Rise of the Cossacks
By the 15th century, most of Ukraine was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth — a sprawling, decentralised empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Here Ukraine became a borderland in the most literal sense: between Catholic Poland and Orthodox Muscovy, between settled agriculture and the wild frontier of the steppe.
It was in this crucible that the Cossacks emerged — self-governing, militarised communities of free warriors who became both defenders and rebels, allies and insurgents. In 1648, led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Cossacks launched a massive uprising against Polish rule, which led to the formation of a semi-independent Hetmanate.
But seeking protection from rising pressure from the west, Khmelnytsky allied with Tsarist Russia in 1654. This act, often mythologised or contested, would entangle Ukraine in a centuries-long relationship with Moscow — alternately one of cooperation, suppression and colonisation.
The Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires: A Divided Nation
By the late 18th century, as Poland was partitioned and the Ottoman Empire receded from the northern Black Sea, Catherine the Great’s Russia seized much of central and eastern Ukraine. Western Ukraine however, including Galicia and Lviv, fell under Habsburg rule.
This imperial split created two different Ukrainian experiences. In the Russian Empire Ukrainians faced intense Russification, their language banned in schools and public life. In Habsburg Galicia, while not free from discrimination, Ukrainian cultural life — press, education, and political organisations — was more tolerated.
The contrast mattered. It helped preserve a distinct Ukrainian identity in the west that would re-emerge as a political force in the 20th century.
The 20th Century: Between Red and Black
World War I and the Russian Revolution offered Ukraine a brief window of independence, with the Ukrainian People’s Republic declared in 1917. But it was quickly crushed by competing armies: Bolsheviks, Whites, Poles, Germans and anarchists. By 1922, most of Ukraine was absorbed into the Soviet Union, while the western regions remained under Polish rule pursuant to the Treaty of Versailles that recreated a new Polish state.
Under Stalin, Ukraine was devastated by collectivisation and the Holodomor — a man-made famine in 1932–33 that killed millions. During World War II, Ukraine became a brutal battleground between Nazi Germany and the USSR, with parts of the population resisting both regimes, and others caught between them.
After 1945, all of Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union, and while nominally a republic she was ruled from Moscow. Soviet industry transformed the landscape, but so too did decades of forced assimilation, censorship and suppression of national identity. Yet Ukraine’s geographic size, resources, and population ensured she remained the second-most powerful republic in the USSR — a sleeping sovereign, biding her time.
Independence and the Post-Soviet Dilemma
In 1991 Ukraine declared independence following the collapse of the USSR. But geography still pulled in competing directions. The west leaned toward Europe, its civic nationalism shaped by the Habsburg tradition and Maidan-era activism. The east and south, more Russophone and industrial, had long-standing ties to Moscow.
This divide was manipulated repeatedly — through energy dependence, trade disruptions, and propaganda. Russia never accepted Ukraine’s geopolitical autonomy. She tried to anchor Kyiv through compliant leaders like Viktor Yanukovych. But with the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013–14, Ukrainians chose definitively: toward Europe, democracy, and sovereignty.
The cost of that choice was war, which began promptly afterwards in 2014.
The 2022 Invasion and the Reinvention of the Borderland
Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 was an attempt to erase Ukraine’s independence and reassert imperial dominance. But it failed — not least because Ukraine was no longer a borderland, but a nation. Her sense of unity ironically was reinforced by centuries of external pressure. Geography, once a vulnerability, became a system of reinforced defence: urban resistance in Kyiv, the logistical arteries of the railways, the Dnipro River as a tactical barrier.
Today, Ukraine’s geography is no longer defined solely by her position between empires, but by her ability to resist them.
Conclusion: Geography as Burden and Strength
Ukraine’s history is one of adaptation — to empires, invasions, ideologies. Its territory has been drawn and redrawn by foreign hands. But its people have consistently pushed back: sometimes with pens, sometimes with rifles, always with resolve.
The story of Ukraine’s geography is not just about being in between. It is about becoming something in its own right — a country that defies the fate others would assign her, and that charts a course not between powers, but beyond them.
