For decades now, Russia has tried to legitimise its claim to a sphere of political influence in Eastern Europe by invoking the narrative of the “brotherly peoples” of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
Afterall, all three of these peoples arose, in equal measure, from medieval Rus – or so the story goes.

Historian Andrey Doronin takes a close look at the non-Russian perspectives on Rus and explains just how wrong this story is: