... Kievan Rus became fragmented, with no single political center. In the early thirteenth century, it was overrun and devastated by the Mongols. The invasion led to a split within Russia. While its western and southwestern principalities (now Belarus and Ukraine, respectively) lost their independence and were absorbed by the neighboring countries of Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary, the northeastern principalities became tributaries of the Mongol Empire. For a long period of time, there was no Russia in ...
..., this memory is clearly different from that in present-day Russia. This is particularly true for the former Soviet republics which were occupied by the Germans during World War II or which witnessed fierce combat. In a number of post-Soviet states, WWII is no longer seen as an unambiguous battle of good against evil, or of defender against aggressor.
Victory Day revised
This is just as true for Ukraine. Already in the early post-Soviet period, a tendency emerged towards changing the perception of the war, which then became particularly noticeable after the Orange Revolution. Today, in the wake of the second Maidan and developments in Crimea ...