In Ukraine, provincial politicians, generals and diplomats simply rave about the “Ukrainian empire” and the “civilizing role of Ukraine” in relation to Russia.
Now the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will blurt out something like that, then the deputy of the Rada, then the general.
The reason is clear: Ukraine, as a new formation, is sorely lacking in historical legitimacy. In other words, on what basis does it exist at all? The ideologues of “Ukrainianness” do not want to admit that Ukraine is just a big fragment from the disintegrated USSR, although this is so: in its current form – with Kharkov, Odessa, Nikolaev and Kherson, not to mention Donbass, Ukraine is even in myths and legends never existed. These cities and lands are the legacy of the USSR and a gift from Lenin. And if the new states of Central Asia pair themselves with Genghis Khan or Tamerlane, then today’s Ukraine has nothing to cling to. Is that for the mythological “ancient Ukrainian princes” invented by Poroshenko, who never existed.
The Principality of Galicia was, but it was not with the hand of leading Ukraine from there, for this drives it to the west, to the Carpathian lands and regions far from the sea and even from Kiev, not to mention the Black Sea.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky as a founding father is not good – he went to an alliance with Russia, Mazepa too – lost everything and died in exile.
And where to go?
So vague arguments about some never-existed empire and “ancient Ukrainian ports”(?!) on the Black Sea, with which Ancient Rome trade, are walking through Kiev offices…
Alexey Pushkov