> And which state was that? The Cossack Hetmanate? Which rebelled against the western occupiers and eventually joined the modern Russian Empire?

First of all, I didn't say there was a state. You know there can be nations without statehood? Indeed, I already mentioned one such example - the Kurds.

But, yes, for the brief existence of the Hetmanate, it was an Ukrainian nation-state.

As far as "joined the modern Russian Empire" - it didn't, not quite. It signed the treaty of Pereyaslav with the Tsardom under Khmelnitsky, yes, and which was supposed to preserve their autonomy. The treaty on which Russians essentially reneged, by claiming that the tsar was an absolute ruler, and could not be bound by treaties with his own subjects. In 100 years, the autonomy was dismantled, the local nobles that resisted were suppressed, serfdom was introduced in direct contravention to the terms of the treaty, and Ukraine became, for all intents and purposes, annexed by Russia. Not willingly, either, and not without resisting - does the name "Mazepa" ring a bell?

> So Russian is one of the modern versions of the older Rus language, but isn't? Not sure I follow your logic here, you're pretty much agreeing with me then claiming for some reason Russian doesn't count as being descendant from the older Rusian language.

Russian is not a "modern version" of the older Rus language. It is a language derived from Old East Slavic. So are Ukrainian and Belarusian, but the three have diverged sufficiently over time to be separate languages in their own right. Just as Czech and Polish are demonstrably different languages that diverged from a single common West Slavic language. And just as East and West Slavic, in turn, diverged from a common proto-Slavic.

> You're missing a key part of history here: Muscovy, the Cossacks and others all rebelled against various invaders, and formed a common state: the Russian Empire. Which included both Moscow and Kiev for centuries.

"The others" were mostly conquered, not rebelled. Tver, Novgorod, Pskov, and so on. Ukrainian alliance with Russia was a desperate measure - they needed military support to succeed in a struggle against Poland. 50 years later, they went to ally with Swedes to get military support in a struggle against Russia.

> Gotcha, so this is basically the modern revisionist, racist Ukrainian propaganda that Russians = Mongols, and Ukrainians are pure white Europeans, right?

No, of course not - that's just your own projection, because the propaganda that you're translating includes that bit for "but they're lynching negroes". Russians aren't Mongols, they're East Slavs, same as Ukrainians and Belarusians.

The Russian language does demonstrably have more Turkic borrowings than Ukrainian and Belarusian, though - and the latter two have more Polish borrowings (something, I must add, that people who talk like you do are always keen to point out when they try to make an argument that "Ukrainian is just Russian corrupted by Polish").

None of this has anything to do with race, or make one language "better" than the other. It does, however, make them different languages. And it does make people speaking them different nations.

By the way, while we're at it - there's a difference between "nation" and "ethnicity", too.

Oh, and statehood, too. In theory, there's nothing preventing the three Eastern Slavic nations from having a shared statehood - provided that it's for their mutual benefit. The problem with the Russian take on this problem is that the resulting shared statehood somehow always ends up being called "Russia", has its capital in Moscow, has Russian as a state language etc; while the other two end up as non-descript provinces, and their language, distinctive culture, and any other "separatist tendencies" suppressed by force. That, in a nutshell, is a difference between integration and occupation.