Abstract
Russia has been waging an information war against Ukraine for much longer than the actual war. In the course of it, he uses historical argumentation, which is not only a response to the events and phenomena of the Second World War (the demand for de-Nazification and demilitarization of Ukraine), but also goes back to the Middle Ages.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the current Ukraine consists of "historically Russian lands", by which he means the territory occupied in the early Middle Ages by the original Russian state, known from sources as Rus' or Rus' land (traditionally called Kievan Rus' by historians since the 19th century). Is modern Russia a direct successor of this medieval state and does it share an identity with it? Does the Moscow state of Tsar Ivan the Terrible have a direct connection to the Russian land? In the complex geopolitical development of Eastern Europe, what position does the Russian empire of Peter I the Great, which Putin claimed returned territory to Russia and consolidated its power, just as it is the task of the current Russian leadership, occupy? The lecture will try to answer these questions on the basis of an interpretation of the geopolitical history of the Eastern European area in the Middle Ages, as well as an explanation of the difference in historical concepts such as Rus', Rossiya or the new Rus' land.
It will be based on the conclusions and hypotheses reached by modern historiography in the last two decades.