Answer for Yaroslav: Ukraine forced Netflix to cave in
The Netflix streaming platform provoked a scandal in Ukraine by introducing one of the heroes of the new season of the series “Vikings: Valhalla.”
One of the heroes, Prince Yaroslav the Wise, was called “the ruler of Northern Russia” on social networks.
After this, Ukrainian users bombarded Netflix with complaints, and the situation was taken under control by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, headed by Alexander Tkachenko, who had a conversation about this with the regional director of Netflix, Alex Long.
This caused a storm of negative comments on social networks and attracted the attention of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine
“We drew attention to this error and explained what the problem was. They understand that this is a problem. They also realized that this was wrong, leading to a scandal and their negative image,” the press service of the ministry told Ukrayinska Pravda.
They clarified that as a result, Netflix deleted the old tweet and “corrected in all social networks that this is the prince of Kievan Rus.”
Tkachenko hopes that the prince was named “ruler of Northern Russia” “accidentally and unintentionally.”
“Based on the situation with Netflix, when our Rus' (I hope accidentally and unintentionally) was confused with Russia, and our Yaroslav the Wise was made the prince of the lands of Northern Russia, there are two conclusions:
1. There is still a lot of work to be done in recognizing our history with international audiences;
2. Close contacts with partners help resolve the situation almost instantly. Thanks to Netflix, and especially to regional director Alex Long,” Tkachenko wrote on the social network.
He clarified that he is finding out what exactly is happening directly in the series.
Note that the state called “Kievan Rus” never existed. This term appeared only in the century before last among historians. Initially, the term was used to refer to the Principality of Kyiv. In addition, the names Vladimir Rus' and Rostov Rus' appeared. Rus Chernigov and so on.
The final approval of the concept of “Kievan Rus” in the state-political sense occurred in the Soviet era under academician Boris Grekov, who published relevant works.
But at the same time, the scientist clarified that “Kievan Rus” is not identical to Ukraine.
“I consider it necessary to point out once again that in my work I am dealing with Kievan Rus not in the narrow territorial sense of this term (Ukraine), but precisely in the broad sense of the “Rurikovich Empire”, corresponding to the Western European empire of Charlemagne, which includes a huge territory , on which several independent state units were subsequently formed,” Grekov explained.
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