page_title: Ukrainians
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Ukrainians / History / Early history
context_page_description: Ukrainians, historically also called Ruthenians, are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is by total population the seventh-largest nation in Europe and the second-largest among the East Slavs after the Russians. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens. The people of Ukraine have historically been known as "Rusyns", "Little Russians", and "Cossacks", among others. The connection with the Zaporozhian Cossacks especially, is emphasized in the Ukrainian national anthem, "We are, brothers, of Cossack kin". According to most dictionary definitions, a descriptive name for the "inhabitants of Ukraine" is Ukrainian or Ukrainian people. The majority of Ukrainians are Eastern Orthodox Christians.
context_section_description: Ukraine has had a very turbulent history, a fact explained by its geographical position. In the 9th century the Varangians from Scandinavia conquered the proto-Slavic tribes on the territory of today's Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia and laid the groundwork for the Kievan Rus’ state. The ancestors of the Ukrainian nation such as Polianians had an important role in the development and culturalization of Kievan Rus’ state. The internecine wars between Rus' princes, which began after the death of Yaroslav the Wise, led to the political fragmentation of the state into a number of principalities. The quarreling between the princes left Kievan Rus’ vulnerable to foreign attacks, and the invasion of the Mongols in 1236. and 1240. finally destroyed the state. Another important state in the history of the Ukrainians is Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (1199–1349).
  The third important state for Ukrainians is Cossack Hetmanate. The Cossacks of Zaporizhia since the late 15th century controlled the lower bends of the river Dnieper, between Russia, Poland and the Tatars of Crimea, with the fortified capital, Zaporizhian Sich. Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky is one of the most celebrated and at the same time most controversial political figures in Ukraine's early-modern history. A brilliant military leader, his greatest achievement in the process of national revolution was the formation of the Cossack Hetmanate state of the Zaporozhian Host (1648–1782). The period of the Ruin in the late 17th century in the history of Ukraine is characterized by the disintegration of Ukrainian statehood and general decline. During the Ruin Ukraine became divided along the Dnieper River into Left-Bank Ukraine and Right-Bank Ukraine, and the two-halves became hostile to each other. Ukrainian leaders during the period are considered to have been largely opportunists and men of little vision who could not muster broad popular support for their policies. There were roughly 4 million Ukrainians at the end of the 17th century.
  At the final stages of the First World War, a powerful struggle for an independent Ukrainian state developed in the central Ukrainian territories, which, until 1917, were part of the Russian Empire. The newly established Ukrainian government, the Central Rada, headed by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, issued four universals, the Fourth of which, dated 22 January 1918, declared the independence and sovereignty of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) on 25 January 1918. The session of the Central Rada on 29 April 1918 ratified the Constitution of the UNR and elected Hrushevsky president.
caption: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey. Painted by Ilya Repin from 1880 to 1891. Two pikes on the left are wrapped in the traditional colors of Ukraine – blue/yellow and red/black.
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