Ukraine: A short history of its creation

Three days before he invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin described Russia’s southwestern neighbour as a bogus country with no history, identity, or “stable traditions of real statehood”.

According to Putin, modern Ukraine was “entirely and fully created by Russia, more specifically the Bolshevik, communist Russia… This process began practically immediately after the 1917 revolution, and moreover Lenin and his associates did it in the sloppiest way in relation to Russia — by dividing, tearing from her pieces of her own historical territory”.