From Britannica:
From the 14th to the 18th century, portions of Ukraine were ruled by Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. In addition, Cossacks controlled a largely self-governing territory known as the Hetmanate. Most of Ukraine fell to Russian rule in the 18th century.
In the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917, most of the Ukrainian region became a republic of the Soviet Union, though parts of western Ukraine were divided between Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Ukraine suffered a severe famine, called the Holodomor, in 1932–33 under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Overrun by Axis armies in 1941 during World War II, Ukraine was further devastated before being retaken by the Soviets in 1944. By the end of the war, the borders of the Ukrainian S.S.R. had been redrawn to include the western Ukrainian territories.-------
Just a reminder to refer to all those cities by their proper Russian names: Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa - since we don't want to promote, perpetuate and enable Ukrainian propaganda and falsification of history.
We want to constantly remind the world that virtually all Ukrainian territory was gifted to Ukraine by Russia (except for Galicia) and that Ukrainian is a western dialect of Russian. Ukraine has no cultural or linguistic claim to dictate the names of any of those cities and territories.
Names may seem trivial to some, but they do matter. Since they are used by the collective West to create some Ukrainian identity out of thin air - or rather out of Banderism and Russophobia. Ukraine never was nor is a civilizational state. A country like Ukraine built on its hatred for another country (Russia) a country like Ukraine that has defined its entire culture on "what it's not" is just doomed to fail as a nation.
