This is the story of how a small frontier territory of approximately 80,000 square kilometers — once home to the free-roaming Zaporozhian Cossacks with a population not exceeding 300,000 — transformed into the largest country in Europe after Russia in just 300 years, surpassing even France and Germany in size without a single conquest or acquisition. While the supporters of Ukraine keep manufacturing its history, they cannot escape the fact that Ukraine is a man-made nation established by some of the most notorious mass murderers in history — Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler.
The history of Ukraine dates back to 1654, when Bohdan Khmelnitsky, a Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, petitioned Russian Czar Alexey to protect his people from the Poles’ annihilation. After the petition was granted, the Treaty of Pereyaslav was signed.
The Zaporozhian Host controlled part of the territory known as the Wild Fields – a vast, sparsely populated frontier outside of Russia’s perimeter. This area was also referred to as “u kraine” (у края) in Old Russian, meaning “at the edge.” The term dates back to the 12th century and was used to describe regions inhabited by half-savage tribes on the outer fringes of medieval Rus. Under the terms of the treaty, Bohdan Khmelnytsky pledged allegiance to Tsar Alexey of Russia. The territory and the Cossack army were absorbed into Russia, and the area was named Malorossiya (the orange area on the map) or Little Russia, which the Hermanate administered with limited suzerainty.
During the reign of Catherine the Great from 1762 to 1796, the Russian Empire underwent a massive expansion. Additional territories were incorporated into Malorossiya, including the city of Kiev, where the land of the Rus began in the 8th century (yellow and orange areas on the map). Due to Malorossiya’s growing size and the Hetmanate incessant corruption, Catherine dissolved the Hetmanate and established the Malorossian Governorate in 1764.
In the same year, the Crimean Khanate seeking protection from the Ottoman Empire joined the Russian Empire, and Catherine formed a new province called Novorossiya or New Russia (the blue area on the map) currently Eastern Ukraine. By implementing rapid development strategies, Catherine and her successors converted this previously undeveloped steppe region with limited glazing lands into a thriving agricultural and industrial hub of the Russian Empire and, later, of the Soviet Union. Major cities such as Odessa, Nikolaev, and Kherson—along with the rest of Novorossiya—were founded and built during this period of rapid expansion.
In 1783, Catherine the Great wrested Crimea from the Ottoman Empire in a bloody war, securing access to the Black Sea and completing Peter the Great’s vision of making the Russian Empire the dominant European power.
Incidentally, in 1888, a monument was constructed in Kiev to honor Bohdan Khmelnitsky. The inscription on the memorial, written in Ukrainian, reads, "Russia, United and Indivisible." The descendants of Zaporozhian Cossacks did not mention Ukraine, and for a good reason: Ukraine as a nation or country did not yet exist. Moreover, the 11th edition Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) describes Ukraine as: "Ukraine (frontier), the name formerly given to a district of European Russia, now comprising the governments of Kharkov, Kiev, Podolia and Poltava." Despite claims to the contrary, it is worth noting that there was no mention of the state of Ukraine in any historical documents before 1919.
In that year, two years after the Bolshevik Revolution, Vladimir Lenin created Ukraine by merging Novorossiya and Malorossiya, along with their populations, into the new Socialist State of Ukraine (the yellow, blue, and orange areas on the map). In 1922, the entity was reconstituted as the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union.
Therefore, any assertions regarding Ukraine's historical presence and noteworthy impact on global culture are merely baseless. To the dismay of pseudo-historians and AI-generated narratives, Ukraine is not the cradle of civilization. Ukrainians did not dig out the Black Sea, nor did they build the pyramids. Ukraine was not invaded by the Mongols and Tatars as former British Prime Minister Liz Truss suggested. Lenin established the nation of Ukraine on Russia's territory, acquired through the considerable sacrifice of Russian lives and resources. This historical context underpins Henry Kissinger’s assertion that “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country.”
In 1939, as per the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Hitler granted Stalin control over a portion of Europe encompassing Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, which were at the time part of Romania, as well as Eastern Poland. Incomprehensibly, at the Yalta conference in February 1945, the leaders of the free world, Roosevelt and Churchill, endorsed Stalin's version of the European rules-based order and security structure. Consequently, they validated the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by acknowledging Soviet control over the annexed regions. Encouraged by the Allies, Stalin annexed Carpathian Ruthenia (presently referred to as Zakarpattia) from Hungary in June 1945. All these territories were then integrated into Ukraine and came to be recognized as Western Ukraine (depicted as green area on the map).
By 1950, Ukraine’s territory exceeded that of any country in Europe other than Russia. But the territorial handouts to Ukraine did not end there. In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, transferred Crimea from the Russian Federation to Ukraine. The status change was mainly symbolic since the transfer was within the Soviet Union, governed by a single set of laws, common defense, and total Moscow control. No one in the Kremlin could foresee that it would manifest itself as an unimaginable strategic error a few decades later.
It is not surprising that the heirs of Roosevelt and Churchill, who, at the Yalta Conference, ruthlessly betrayed Romanians, Hungarians, and Poles, leaving them subjected to Stalin’s mass-murdering tyranny for a half-century, are now perpetuating the unprincipled nature of Western democracies by upholding the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The war has exposed Ukraine to two of its most critical vulnerabilities, namely questionable legitimacy and what President George H.W. Bush called “suicidal nationalism.” Ukraine's neighboring countries, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania, do not recognize their current borders with Ukraine. Following the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine managed to keep its borders drawn by the Soviet Union, and millions of Russians, Poles, Hungarians, and Romanians were trapped in a newly created country. Furthermore, the war has sharpened this multiethnic country's internal incompatibilities.
NATO members Poland, Hungary, and Romania are beginning to realize that a Ukrainian victory appears increasingly unlikely, and that a Ukrainian defeat could potentially result in the return of their people and territories.
Indeed, the Poles are open about their aspirations. President Andrzej Duda of Poland has recently stated, "For many years, and perhaps even centuries, there will be no borders separating our nations - Poland and Ukraine. Such a border will cease to exist!" The Polish media refers to this as a "soft annexation" of Western Ukraine. Romania and Hungary are also showing interest, particularly as numerous individuals from former Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia already hold Romanian passports, and many residents of Zakarpattia have acquired Hungarian passports.
Since Ukraine lacks historical roots in the real estate it inhabits, the inescapable conclusion is that Ukraine’s neighbors pursuing their own interests make Ukraine look like vulnerable prey amidst formidable predators. It is inevitable that, sooner rather than later, Ukraine will disintegrate, and its fragmented remains will gravitate toward the countries to which they truly belong.
Konrad Adenauer once remarked, “History is the sum total of things that could be avoided.” It couldn’t be better said about Ukraine; if Czar Alexey in 1654 had not protected the Zaporozhian Host’s Cossacks, the precursors of Ukrainians, from annihilation, we would never have heard about Ukraine. Similarly, if Lenin did not establish the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, the very idea of a Ukrainian state might have remained unknown to history.
Alexander G. Markovsky, Ph.D. in economics and political science, is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, a think tank that examines national security, energy, risk analysis, and other public policy issues. He is the author of Anatomy of a Bolshevik and Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It. Mr. Markovsky is the owner and CEO of Litwin Management Services, LLC. He can be reached at alexander.g.markovsky@gmai.com
