Most analyses of the war between Russia and Ukraine focus on tanks, borders, sanctions, military alliances, and geopolitics.
Yet beneath the visible conflict lies a deeper struggle that remains insufficiently explored.
This war is not only a dispute over territory.
It is a dispute over the meaning of history itself.
To understand that claim, we must begin with a concept that is frequently misunderstood: myth.
What Is a Myth?
In everyday language, a myth is often understood as a falsehood.
In sociology, anthropology, and collective psychology, however, a myth means something very different.
A myth is a shared narrative that answers four fundamental questions:
- Who are we?
- Where do we come from?
- Why do we suffer?
- What is our destiny?
Myths are not necessarily false.
Nor are they necessarily historically accurate.
Their primary function is not to describe reality with academic precision.
Their function is to create meaning.
Every civilization possesses founding myths.
Rome had Romulus and Remus.
The United States has the Founding Fathers.
France has the myth of the Republic.
Russia has Holy Rus.
Ukraine has the Cossack tradition and the struggle for national survival.
Nations do not live by facts alone.
They live by stories that give those facts meaning.
When a myth is challenged, the emotional reaction is often far stronger than when a historical detail is disputed.
This is why identity conflicts are so difficult to resolve.
The Russian Myth
Modern Russian identity rests upon several powerful historical pillars.
The first is Kievan Rus.
According to this narrative, Russian civilization begins with the baptism of Prince Vladimir in Kyiv and continues through the historical development of Moscow.
The second pillar is the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome.
After the fall of Constantinople, Moscow increasingly viewed itself as the guardian of Orthodox Christianity and the heir to Eastern Christian civilization.
The third pillar is the Great Patriotic War.
The victory over Nazi Germany became one of the central legitimizing narratives of the modern Russian state.
Yet there is a fourth pillar that is often overlooked.
The trauma of 1917.
For many Orthodox and conservative Russians, the Soviet period does not represent the continuation of historical Russia.
It represents its interruption.
In this view:
- the monarchy was destroyed;
- the Church was persecuted;
- the traditional elite was eliminated;
- historical continuity was shattered.
Russia was not liberated by the Revolution.
Russia was conquered by it.
This perspective is crucial for understanding the psychology of many contemporary Russian conservatives.
The Ukrainian Myth
The Ukrainian national narrative developed along a different path.
Its principal pillars include:
- Kyiv as the original center of Rus;
- the Cossack tradition;
- resistance to imperial domination;
- the trauma of the Holodomor;
- the struggle for sovereignty.
Like the Russian narrative, this is not merely history.
It is identity.
It is a framework through which millions of people interpret the past and imagine the future.
The Fundamental Analytical Error
Much of the international discussion begins with an unspoken assumption:
Whenever historical texts refer to Rus, they must be referring to Russia.
But is that assumption justified?
The question deserves closer examination.
The Problem of Rus
When an Orthodox monk in the nineteenth century spoke of Holy Rus, he was not thinking about the modern Russian Federation.
Nor was he thinking about modern Ukraine.
Neither concept existed in its contemporary form.
Rus was understood as a civilizational, spiritual, and historical reality.
It was a community of memory.
A sacred geography.
A cultural universe.
This raises an uncomfortable but important question:
When historical mystics spoke of Rus, who exactly did they mean?
Lavrenty of Chernigov and the Forgotten Question
The prophecies attributed to Lavrenty of Chernigov are frequently cited in modern debates.
Yet there is a methodological problem.
Lavrenty's mental world existed before modern nationalism fully shaped Eastern Europe.
When he spoke of Rus, he was not speaking in the language of twenty-first-century nation-states.
He was speaking about a spiritual civilization inherited from the historical Rus centered in Kyiv.
This leads to a provocative hypothesis.
Have later interpreters automatically replaced "Rus" with "Russia," thereby introducing a modern political meaning that the original texts never required?
The question is not absurd.
It deserves serious scholarly investigation.
Putin, Kirill, and the Restoration of Myth
The relationship between Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill is often described in purely political terms.
Yet there is a deeper dimension.
Putin provides institutional power.
Kirill provides historical legitimacy.
Together they participate in the reconstruction of a narrative that many Russians believe was broken in 1917.
This narrative is not merely political.
It is civilizational.
Its implicit message is simple:
Russia is not merely a state.
Russia is a civilization with a historical mission.
What Dzhokhar Dudayev Understood
Dzhokhar Dudayev approached the problem from an entirely different angle.
He understood that Ukraine was not simply another former Soviet republic.
It occupied a unique symbolic position.
It was connected to the origins of Rus itself.
If Ukraine moved permanently beyond Moscow's sphere, Russia would face a profound identity question:
Who are we without Kyiv?
That is not merely a geopolitical question.
It is a psychological and civilizational one.
The Invisible War
Beneath the military conflict lies a deeper struggle.
A struggle over memory.
A struggle over origins.
A struggle over the meaning of Rus.
Russia presents itself as the principal heir to that tradition.
Ukraine presents itself as its original birthplace.
Both narratives contain historical truths.
Both simplify a far more complex reality.
The Question That Deserves Attention
Perhaps the central question is not who inherited Rus.
Perhaps the more important question is this:
Who defined the meaning of Rus?
Because whoever controls the narrative of origin often gains influence over the narrative of destiny.
And it may be precisely within this forgotten struggle over historical meaning that one of the least understood dimensions of the current conflict can be found.
The war may not only be about land.
It may be about ownership of the past itself.
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