1. PUTIN AND HISTORY AS A POLITICAL WEAPON
Before invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin attempted something essential for his future war: to transform a political claim into a historical inevitability.
In July 2021, he published the essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” The thesis was clear. Russians and Ukrainians were, fundamentally, one people. Their separation was artificial. Modern Ukraine was a recent construction. And Moscow was the natural heir to the ancient Rus'.
A few months later, History was transformed into war.
Putin never abandoned that weapon. He continues to use History to politically justify his vision of Ukraine and Russia. Very recently, he once again found himself at the centre of a controversy precisely because of History. According to the Financial Times, during a conversation lasting around 90 minutes with Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Putin devoted much of his time to medieval Slavic history and to the Kremlin's interpretation of the origins of the war. Støre and Stubb later challenged the characterisation that this had simply been a “history lesson”, but the controversy itself demonstrates something obvious: Putin continues to regard History as a central part of his political argument about Ukraine.
Perhaps this is one of the most disturbing aspects of the entire situation: virtually no current European political leader seems capable of dismantling, point by point, the historical narrative presented by Putin.
They can condemn the invasion. They can discuss sanctions, weapons, borders and negotiations. But when Putin goes back centuries and begins constructing his historical narrative, he is rarely challenged on the same ground, with knowledge, dates, documents, treaties and signatures.
And that leaves Putin alone to tell the story of History. Not necessarily because his version is true, but because almost no one seems prepared to dismantle it immediately.
That is precisely where his strength lies.
And also his greatest vulnerability.
2. THE QUESTION PUTIN MUST ANSWER
The moment Putin transforms a historical interpretation into a political and territorial claim, it is no longer enough to speak about genealogies, battles, principalities and ancestors.
It must be proven.
Putin likes to present many of his positions as legally grounded. He invokes treaties, borders, agreements, historical rights and state succession.
Very well.
Then we should apply the same standard to his narrative.
Where are the documents?
Where is the act that transferred authority from Kyiv to Moscow?
Where is the authority that authorised that transfer?
Where is the treaty?
Where is the signature?
Because one thing is to claim that something was inherited. Another is to prove that such an inheritance was actually transferred.
This is where the grand narrative begins to encounter serious problems.
3. KYIVAN RUS' AND THE RISE OF MUSCOVY
The first problem with Putin's narrative is that it turns Kyivan Rus' into a kind of primitive version of modern Russia.
It was not.
Rus' was a medieval political world composed of different principalities and centres of power. Kyiv occupied a central and extraordinarily important position, but there was no modern Russia waiting to be born in Moscow.
Then came fragmentation, invasions, wars and the rise of new political centres.
Muscovy grew because it allied itself with the Golden Horde.
It expanded.
It absorbed territories. And centuries later, it became an imperial power.
That is History. But it does not automatically follow from this that Moscow legally received the entire political inheritance of the ancient Rus'.
There is a fundamental difference between becoming powerful and receiving a transfer of sovereignty.
A conquest is not a title deed granting ownership over the entire past of the territories conquered.
And a genealogy is not a legal act.
Therefore, the question remains.
Who transferred Kyiv to Moscow?
Where is the document? Where are the signatures?
4. PEREIASLAV, 1654: THE AGREEMENT THAT DID NOT CLOSE HISTORY
The Russian imperial narrative presents Pereiaslav as the moment of so-called “reunification”. The formula is well known: the Cossacks supposedly returned permanently to Russia.
But that phrase brutally oversimplifies what actually happened. Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Cossack leadership found themselves in an extremely complex military and political situation. They were seeking allies. They were trying to survive a war. They were seeking to preserve rights, autonomy and political capacity.
There was the Pereiaslav Rada. There were oaths, taken only by the Cossacks. There were negotiations.
But there was also a fundamental problem.
The Cossacks expected reciprocal guarantees. The Tsar's representative, Vasily Buturlin, refused to take, on behalf of the Tsar, an equivalent oath guaranteeing Cossack rights and liberties.
From Moscow's point of view, the Tsar did not swear oaths to his subjects. This difference is not a detail.
It reveals that the two sides did not necessarily understand in the same way the relationship they were establishing. The Cossack leadership could regard that connection as a political relationship involving commitments and guarantees. Moscow interpreted it within a logic of subordination to the Tsar.
Therefore, presenting Pereiaslav as a simple deed through which Ukraine was handed over to Russia forever is a later simplification.
And there is an even more uncomfortable question. If Pereiaslav had definitively settled everything in 1654, why, only four years later, was the Cossack leadership once again negotiating its political future?
5. HADlACH, 1658: FOUR YEARS LATER
The answer is called Hadiach.
In 1658, only four years after Pereiaslav, the Treaty of Hadiach was concluded between the Cossack leadership of Ivan Vyhovsky and representatives of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, within the framework of the authority of King John II Casimir Vasa.
And here there is an essential difference. We are dealing with a documented political process. There are identifiable interlocutors. There are representatives. There is authority. There is a text. There was negotiation.
And there is a concrete political project: a union intended to form a Commonwealth of Three Nations: Lithuania, Poland and Ruthenia.
The question is simple. If, in 1654, the political future of the Cossack community had been definitively and eternally handed over to the Tsar, how can we explain that, four years later, that same leadership was formally negotiating a new political architecture?
We are not talking about four centuries.
We are talking about four years.
And that fact alone destroys the idea that Pereiaslav definitively closed the political future of Cossack Ukraine.
6. POLAND, LITHUANIA AND RUTHENIA: THE COMMONWEALTH OF THREE NATIONS
The Treaty of Hadiach sought to reorganise the Commonwealth into a structure recognising not only Poland and Lithuania, but also Ruthenia.
Poland.
Lithuania.
Ruthenia.
We should not project the modern concept of the nation-state onto the seventeenth century. The Ruthenia of that period was not modern Ukraine in today's terms. But there was a topographical survey carried out by the Frenchman Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan in 1630, and in his cartography he began identifying Ukraina/Ukrania. Later, he dedicated his work Description d'Ukranie to John II Casimir Vasa.
There were elites. Institutions. Interests. Military forces. A religious tradition.
And the capacity to negotiate.
The Cossack leadership was not a passive population waiting for Moscow to tell it who it was.
It engaged in politics.
It negotiated with Warsaw.
It negotiated with Moscow.
It sought alliances.
It defended interests.
It attempted to preserve rights and autonomy.
It had a seat at the table.
The Hadiach project also sought to institutionally recognise the position of the Cossack elites and the Orthodox hierarchy alongside their Polish and Lithuanian counterparts. The Orthodox Church and its rights were part of the negotiation.
This is fundamental. It dismantles the idea that the Ruthenian populations were merely a human mass without institutions of their own, naturally destined to integrate into an eternal Russia, as Russian propaganda attempts to make people believe.
They had institutions.
They had a Church.
They had hierarchies.
They had military leadership.
They had political interests.
And they negotiated.
It is in this context that the Vasa dynasty naturally enters this story. The Ruthenian/Ukrainian reality and the Cossack leadership were recognised and incorporated into a negotiated political project within the framework of the authority of John II Casimir Vasa.
The treaty existed. The representatives existed. The political process existed. And the documents exist.
And John II Casimir swore an oath.
7. WHO COULD TRANSFER THE INHERITANCE OF RUS'?
Centuries later, the Russian Empire developed an increasingly powerful narrative about its exclusive connection to the inheritance of Rus'.
But here we must separate two things. One thing is to construct a historical narrative. Another is to carry out a legal transfer of sovereignty.
Figures such as Feofan Prokopovych played an important role in the ideological construction of the new imperial language during the reign of Peter I.
Feofan Prokopovych was an influential prelate and intellectual. He was not an authority capable of transferring sovereignty from Kyiv to Moscow.
He could defend an idea. He could construct a narrative. He could ideologically legitimise imperial power.
But a narrative does not replace a treaty.
And a theory does not replace a signature.
This is where the grand Russian imperial narrative reveals its fragility and collapses, as is evident in the Sefer Zerubbabel: Menahem ben Ammiel approaches Armilus and blows upon his face, killing him.
Truth always defeats the lifeless statue.
8. WHERE IS THE SIGNATURE?
Putin begins with real facts. Muscovites and Ukrainians share centuries of History. They share cultural and religious elements. They share origins and historical spaces. No one needs to deny that.
The deception begins with the next step.
A shared history is transformed into a title deed.
A shared origin is transformed into a right of domination.
A historical inheritance is transformed into a territorial claim.
The narrative then draws a straight line:
Kyiv.
Muscovy.
The Russian Empire.
Russia.
And concludes that Ukraine historically belongs to Russia.
But real History is not a straight line. Between Kyiv and Moscow lie centuries of political fragmentation, invasions, wars, alliances, treaties, choices and distinct identities.
Pereiaslav did not close History.
Hadiach proves it.
Four years later, not four centuries later, the Cossack leadership was once again negotiating its political future. Ruthenia emerged as a political reality. The Cossack elites had a voice. The Orthodox hierarchy was part of the institutional architecture that was intended to be built.
History continued.
And that is precisely what Putin's narrative seeks to erase: the choices that existed and the paths that did not inevitably lead to Moscow.
Putin may go back a thousand years.
He may select the episodes that suit him.
He may construct imaginary genealogies.
He may present conquests as inheritances.
But when he transforms that History into a claim of legitimacy over another people, it is no longer enough to speak.
It must be proven.
Therefore, the question remains.
Where is the document that transferred authority from Kyiv to Moscow?
Where is the authority that authorised it?
Where is the treaty?
Where is the signature?
Until there is a documentary answer to these questions, Putin's “historical inevitability” remains what it truly is:
a political narrative constructed to justify a claim to power. A stone statue, an Armilus waiting for someone to blow upon it.
Feliciano Vasa, 29 October 2026
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