The Myth of the 'Russian World' (Russkiy Mir)

What is the “Russian World”?

“Russkiy Mir” (Russian World) is a political concept promoted by the Kremlin since the early 2000s. It claims that all Russian-speaking people, as well as peoples who were once part of the Russian Empire or the USSR, belong to a single “civilizational space” centered in Moscow.

In July 2021, Putin published a programmatic essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” where he directly stated that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people” and that Ukraine as a separate nation is the result of an “anti-Russian project.” This text effectively became the ideological justification for the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Why is this a myth?

A separate language

The Ukrainian language is an independent language, not a “dialect of Russian.” It belongs to the East Slavic group but differs from Russian at the level of phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. By lexical composition, Ukrainian is closer to Polish and Belarusian than to Russian. The earliest monuments in the Ukrainian language date to the 16th century.

A separate culture

The Ukrainian cultural tradition has its own unique features: from Cossack baroque to kobzar traditions, from pysanka (Easter egg painting) to vertep (puppet theater). The Ukrainian literary tradition — from Ivan Kotliarevsky (1798) to Lesia Ukrainka and Taras Shevchenko — developed as a consciously distinct tradition from the Russian one.

A separate state tradition

• Kyivan Rus (882–1240) — a state with its capital in Kyiv
• Principality of Galicia-Volhynia (1199–1349) — direct continuation of Rus statehood
• Zaporizhian Sich (16th–18th centuries) — a unique proto-democratic formation
• Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917–1921) — the first modern Ukrainian state
• Independent Ukraine (since 1991) — confirmed by the referendum of December 1, 1991, with 90.32% voting for independence

What researchers say

Timothy Snyder (Yale) in “The Road to Unfreedom” (2018) shows that the concept of “Russkiy Mir” is an instrument of neo-imperial policy that uses a distorted version of history to justify aggression against neighboring states.

Andrew Wilson (UCL) in “The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation” (2015) describes in detail the formation of Ukrainian national identity as an independent historical process, not a derivative of Russian identity.

Serhii Plokhy (Harvard) in “Lost Kingdom” (2017) demonstrates that the very idea of “one people” is a product of Russian imperial construction, not a reflection of historical reality.

The results of the invasion

The irony is that Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022 — which was meant to “return” Ukraine to the “Russian World” — produced the opposite result:

• Ukrainian national identity sharply strengthened
• The share of citizens who identify as Ukrainian rose to over 90%
• Use of the Ukrainian language increased significantly
• International support for Ukraine reached unprecedented levels
• The concept of “Russkiy Mir” became synonymous with war, destruction, and death