From: Atlantic Council By Taras Kuzio
To mark this year’s Ukrainian Unity Day on January 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree calling for efforts to research, publicize, and safeguard Ukrainian cultural identity in regions of today’s Russian Federation “historically inhabited by Ukrainians.” The move was a masterful piece of trolling by the Ukrainian leader, while also representing a long overdue history lesson for his Russian counterpart.
For years, Vladimir Putin has made a habit of rewriting the past in order to deny Ukraine’s right to exist and justify his ongoing invasion of the country. However, his claims rely on centuries of Russian imperial propaganda that bear little resemblance to the historical reality.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in spring 2014 with the seizure of Crimea, Putin has resurrected the old Czarist era administrative term of “Novorossiya” (“New Russia’) to refer to the regions of southern and eastern Ukraine that he claims are “historically Russian lands.” He has frequently dismissed Ukrainian claims to these regions, while insisting they were erroneously handed to Ukraine by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Voice of Ukraine 