1. Ancient World: Greeks, Scythians, Hozars, nomadic peoples—rich history, still relevant today
Greek colonists arrived in southern Ukraine as early as the 8th century BC. They built several large cities, including Olbia and Chersonesos Tavriya.
The colonisation of Crimea, the Black Sea, and the Azov regions proved to be a profitable trade route, connecting the Caucasus, Asia, etc.
The Slavs also inherited frescoes and terracotta (ceramic products made of fired, coloured porous clay) from ancient Greek culture.
In Scythian times, an original agricultural culture developed on Ukraine's right and left banks of the Dnipro river. It has Scythian features and a distinct agricultural character.
Small settlements and fortresses were replaced by large settlements with formidable wooden fortresses and ramparts, such as Nemyrivske and Motronynske.
A large number of distinct features of Ukrainian culture and language have Indo-Iranian Scythian-Sarmatian origins, ranging from the "animal style" of Kyivan Rus fine arts to "icavism" and the fricative "h" in the Ukrainian language.
2. Medieval period: Rus' and Grand Duchy
During the VII–VIII centuries, the Slavs settled in Eastern Europe, and the unification of Eastern Slavic principalities around Kyiv resulted in the formation of the Kyivan Rus.
This era established a common trading space that connected the West and East, the South and the North.
Kyivan Rus played a key role in shaping the region's political map, serving as a political and security shield for Europe and adopting Christianity from Byzantium in 988, which helped shape its religious identity.
The Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia was formed between 1199-1349, continuing Kyivan Rus traditions.
Following the demise of Kyivan Rus, it emerged as a new centre of political and economic activity, ensuring the rapid development of Ukrainian territory.
Culturally rich Ukrainian lands were then incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which existed from 1236 to 1795 on the territory of modern Lithuania, parts of Estonia and Latvia, Belarus, eastern Poland, and the majority of Ukraine).
This peaceful merger occurred because the Lithuanian princes were loyal to the existing system in these lands, which allowed the local feudal lords to maintain their power.
The Lithuanian Statute, a collection of laws based on Rus' Justice (an important codification of rules protecting private property, regulating inheritance, and contracts), had a significant impact on Ukrainian life and included elements of customary law.
3. Early modern times: Rzeczpospolita and the Cossack state, Qirimli and Turkiye
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania declined in the early sixteenth century due to constant wars with Muscovy. In these circumstances, Lithuania sought refuge in an alliance with Poland.
The signing of the Union of Lublin on July 1, 1569, marked the start of a new federal Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
state that lasted until 1795, when Poland was divided among Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary.
According to the Union of Lublin's decisions, the Ukrainian gentry had equal rights just as the Polish and Lithuanian nobility did.
It advocated for the preservation of all existing privileges, including religious freedom and the language in official proceedings.
At the same time, the Rzeczpospolita pursued a policy of barring Ukrainians from participating in city government and concentrating power in the hands of Poles.
Orthodox churches were ordered to shut, and forced conversions to Catholicism were carried out.
In order to unite Ukraine's Catholic and Orthodox churches, a church council was convened in 1596 in Berest (now Brest). As a result, a third church, the Uniate or Greek Catholic Church, emerged.
The privileged status of the Polish gentry had a strong assimilationist influence on the Ukrainian nobility.
This resulted in a widespread renunciation of Orthodoxy, conversion to Catholicism, and Polonisation.
Instead, in the first decades of the sixteenth century, the Ukrainian Cossacks emerged in the Naddniprianshchyna (the historical and geographical part of Ukraine that originally included the central and northern regions of Ukraine and is geographically connected to the Dnipro basin) and pursued democracy, resulting in the formation of a new social organization.
Cossack communities provided free and equal use of land and civil liberties.
Peasant democracy gradually adopted the characteristics of military Cossack democracy, which was based on customary law; elements of democracy in the form of viche (general assembly to resolve socially important issues); and conciliarity, freedom, and justice.
4. Modern Times: Muscovy, Russian Empire, and the Demise of the Cossack Statehood
At the same time, Muscovy
continued an oppressive policy, as evidenced by the Moscow tsar's order in 1626 to burn Ukrainian old books, including the Teacher's Gospel, and the Moscow church's order in 1630 to destroy the writings of Petro Mohyla and other Ukrainian figures.
In 1648, the Cossacks, peasants, burghers, gentry, and clergy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth launched a national liberation movement in Ukraine in response to violations of their rights.
The Cossack community became the epicentre of the anti-feudal and national liberation movements. However, the uprising had certain adverse effects, most notably attacks on Jews.
After Bohdan Khmelnytsky signed an alliance agreement with Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (the March Articles, a set of documents that regulated Ukraine's inclusion into the Muscovy, whose treasury was replenished by Ukrainian taxes and whose lands were protected from external attacks), and after the Hetmanate's weakening and confrontation with the Muslim world, the Muscovy launched an offensive on the Zaporozhian Army's lands.
For example, in November 1708, Peter I orchestrated the Baturyn massacre to punish Ivan Mazepa (hetman (leader) of Cossack-controlled Ukraine) for his European choice and alliance with the Swedes.
The army of Russian Tsar Peter I destroyed the Ukrainian city of Baturyn, the hetman's capital.
The European press extensively covered Muscovy's atrocities, which included quartering defenders, raping women, burning citizens alive, breaking children's and the elderly's heads, and hanging severed heads.
The main goal of the Moscow authorities was to eliminate the Cossack community completely.
Empress Catherine II abolished the Hetmanate as a political institution in 1764, as well as the Cossack regimental system in Sloboda, Ukraine, the following year.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Ukrainian society became increasingly resistant to the Russian tsarist regime's constant suppression of democratic political culture.
The Russian tsarist regime's
constant suppression sparked increased resistance in Ukrainian society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
For example, in 1720, Tsar Peter I issued a decree prohibiting book printing in Ukrainian and removing Ukrainian texts from church books, and in 1729, Peter II ordered that all government decrees and orders be translated from Ukrainian into Russian.
The arrest of members of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood in 1847 was one example of the suppression of the national movement in Naddniprianshchyna (the Brotherhood's goal was to establish a Ukrainian state with a democratic system as part of a Slavic people's federation).
5. Soviet times: quasi-republic
With the formation of the Soviet Union
, violence against the Ukrainian people continued.
Joseph Stalin announced mass collectivisation on the twelfth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1929, taking peasants' property by force.
In 1932, the Bolsheviks carried out the Holodomor, an artificial famine perpetrated by Soviet authorities as a punitive measure against Ukrainians, to finally eliminate Ukrainian resistance to the regime and attempt to establish an independent Ukrainian state separate from Moscow.
During the Holodomor, the Soviet Union exported three and a half million tonnes of grain to the West, while over four million Ukrainians starved to death.
Simultaneously with collectivisation, the Bolsheviks launched political repressions against the Ukrainian intelligentsia.
At the same time, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which was independent of Moscow, was liquidated: thirteen bishops died in prison, and eight thousand churches were destroyed, accounting for 65% of all churches in Ukraine.
The Soviet government's political repression culminated in the Great Terror of 1937–1938 (a large-scale campaign of mass repression of citizens launched by the Soviet leadership and Joseph Stalin personally to eliminate political opponents, intimidate the population, and change the social structure of society), during which over 120,000 people were executed.
"If the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 altered the political system, collectivisation created a new economic system, and the Great Terror was the third revolution in the mind. People living in constant panic and fear were turned into biomass," concludes historian Timothy Snyder.
6. Independence: diminishing Russian influence and migration to Europe
Since Ukraine's independence
, modern Russia has continued to carry on the Soviet tradition of weaponising every aspect of human life.
In 2003, Russia attempted to quietly seize territory by building a dam on Tuzla Island, allowing Moscow to claim rights to the Kerch Strait.
In 2006 and 2009, Russia blackmailed Ukraine with gas, which eventually led to the Kharkiv agreements (an agreement that provided for the extension of the Russian Black Sea Fleet's stay in Sevastopol from 2017 to 2042 in exchange for the cancellation of customs duties on the transit of Russian gas to Ukraine).
Russia funded the activities of political parties and the fifth column in Ukraine, one of which is the Moscow Patriarchate, which supports Russia's war of aggression.
Every epoch in Ukraine has tempered the nation's spirit: Kyivan Rus became the germ of humanism; the Polish-Lithuanian period formed a call to fight for justice, to defend republicanism, and the separation of powers; the Cossacks implemented democratic and fair principles; and Muscovy's attacks were countered by ideas of constitutionalism, sovereignty, and territorial autonomy.
The Russian Empire's repressions only strengthened the Ukrainian people's commitment to parliamentary-republican and civic traditions in opposition to the Russian Empire's absolutism.
During the persecution in the USSR, the activist movement emphasised the importance of citizens' political rights and freedoms over collectivism and party dominance.
All of these values were cherished by Ukraine during its independence and it has defended each and every one of them during the Russian invasion.
