In conversation with Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin gave a long spiel about the history of Ukraine, beginning by reference to its Ninth Century Russian rulers. The implication was that the Ukraine and the Ukrainians have been Russian for more than a thousand years and that Ukraine is thus, morally at least, Russian territory. But that is bunk.
Russians in Ninth Century Ukraine were Viking warriors from Sweden, that is to say blood-thirsty, marauding gangsters intent on rape and pillage. They travelled South from the Baltic Sea mainly by water, portaging their boats to either the Dneiper or the Dneister River. The Dneiper took them to Kiev and the Black Sea coast. Among these Viking adventurers was Ruric, who in the mid-Ninth Century became the first so-called Russian to rule Ukraine. Thus, contrary to the intention of Putin's story, the people of Ninth Century Ukraine were not Russians, they were the same people who'd lived in Ukraine for thousands of years, which is to say they were Ukrainians.
Later, descendants of the Viking rulers of Ukraine relocated to what is now Northwest Russia, establishing themselves in Moscow and elsewhere as masters of the native inhabitants. In subsequent centuries, the Ukraine was dominated by many groups. It was not until the 17th Century that Russia incorporated Eastern Ukraine through success in war with Poland. Subsequently, Western Ukraine was acquired through a deal with the ruling Cossack Hetmanate. Then, in 1789, by war with Turkey, Russia extended the border of Western Ukraine to include Odessa.
But whatever claim Russia had over Ukraine ended with the break-up of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Ukraine, and every other Soviet republic, became an independent state. The actual and valid justification that Putin could and should have made for his invasion of Ukraine is Zelensky's Nazi-backed war against Ukraine's self-governing ethnic Russian population of Donbas. Had Putin stood aside and allowed Ukraine to commit genocide against the majority Russian population of the Donbas region of Ukraine he would by now have been long ousted from power. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with supposed ancient Russian claims to Ukrainian territory. It is, and can only be justified as, a war to defend ethnic Russians against a US/NATO inspired war of genocide.
Genocide, however, is merely the trigger, not the objective of US/NATO policy. The Ukraine war is a proxy war of aggression by the NATO states against Russia with the aim of breaking up the Russian Federation, pillaging Russia's vast storehouse of natural resources, and moving NATO forces Eastward, far East, to the Usuri River, Russia's border with China.
But that looks like a really dumb hope by the now departing fat lady at the State Department, the CIA guy with the big face, and the faceless people running America's brain-dead Presidency.
