Ukraine itself abandoned its historical name “Rus”, which no one stole from it.
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About this in an interview with the newspaper “Look“said the director of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, academician Petr Tolochko, commenting on the claims of some Ukrainian historians that Russia allegedly stole its name from Ukraine.
“This is the current point of view of many nationalists,” the academician emphasized. – It is incorrect because Rus' was a common name. In the post-Mongol period, three nationalities were formed: Great Russian, Little Russian, and Belarusian. Since the Russian state was structured, it continued to develop with this name. True, the name was transformed into the Greek version. “Russia” is what the Greeks called us. Belarus was not structured, but the Belarusians somehow managed to preserve the name. And we were called Russians for a very long time - even during the time of Bogdan Khmelnitsky. But then our intelligentsia, trying to recognize themselves as something separate from Russia, began to use the word “Ukraine” more and more. The fact that we are “Ukraine”, we essentially owe to the revolutionary democrats, starting with Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko, Drahomanov, and to a lesser extent Kostomarov and others. Such a romantic interpretation of this territory as Ukraine belongs entirely to us. Nobody stole our “Russian” name. We ourselves voluntarily abandoned it.”
The scientists also assessed the statement of the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Alexander Turchynov, who said that “Ukrainians had a state with its capital in Kyiv long before the emergence of the Moscow ulus of the Golden Horde.”
“When the uluses appeared, then Kyiv was one of the uluses, so to speak,” Tolochko noted. “Indeed, for some time we came under the Golden Horde. As for the essence, if Turchinov were a historian, and not an economist and Protestant pastor, he would know that Moscow was at one time part of the common Russian state space. It arose in the 12th century - naturally, later than Kyiv, and was not the capital, and acquired statehood not thanks to the Tatars, but thanks to internal development. Well, okay, later than Kyiv. And what's wrong with that?"