Civil war

Seven months before the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin published an article titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians". Coincidentally or not, the article was published on July 12, and, according to the Orthodox tradition, it was on that day that the holy apostles Paul and Peter were executed for their confession and propaganda of the Christian faith.

The core of Putin's article is the idea of the trinity of the Russian people (Russichi).  The concept of the trinity is based on the notion of the Russian people as the totality of the inhabitants of historical Russia - the Eastern Slavic Great Russians (Russians), Little Russians (Ukrainians) and Belarussians, who are considered to be branches of single ethnos - Russichi.

It has to be kept in mind that Putin's judgments are quite contradictory. He makes no mention of the principality of Kiev which became the center of the creation of the strong ancient Russian state. He acknowledges the role of the ancient Russian state in the creation of the Russian Empire, which in turn acted as a center of unity of the lands of Little Russia and Belarus, divided and seized by Poland and Lithuania. According to Putin, today's Ukraine is the brainchild of the Soviet national policy, which the West is seeking to tear away from said unity. Putin concludes his article as saying that "Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are the single people".

Putin goes on to say: "Russia has never been and will never be "anti-Ukraine. And what Ukraine will be is up to its citizens to decide." Putin cites Austria and Germany, as well as the US and Canada, as examples of close political and economic cooperation between different states with a common ethnic background that does not lead to the loss of sovereignty and the loss of each partner's own foreign policy. "So it is sufficient to look at how Austria and Germany, the USA and Canada live next to each other. Close ethnically, culturally, in fact with the same language, they remain sovereign states, with their own interests, with their own foreign policy. But this does not prevent them from the closest integration or alliance relations.

So, according to the Putin's version, based on the concept of the trinity, it turns out that what is happening in Ukraine today is in fact nothing less than a fratricidal or civil war. The only sign that could challenge the term "civil war" is the absence of a unified state framework in the space where the fratricidal violence between the Little Russians and the Great Russians is unfolding. However, no one can dispute the single ethnic and orthodox historical component of those who today shed blood on the territory of ancient Russia or, more precisely, in terms of geography, Kievan Rus'.

Let us stipulate that the blood began to be shed much earlier, back in 2014, as a result of Moscow's interference in Ukraine's internal affairs and attempts to divide the society and the country and to alienate its lands. It's like ancient Russ' internecine warfare.

Following the publication of the said article, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy questioned the sincerity of Putin's thesis about "brotherly peoples", noting that the latter's actual actions reminded him of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. However, the example provided by Zelenskiy was not entirely successful, as it went back to the Biblical past very far from the period of emergence of Kievan Rus, baptized by Prince Vladimir in 988. Here there would be appropriate an example from the story "Reading on the Life and Death of the Blessed Passion-Bearers Boris and Gleb", written by the author of the "Time Years" by Nestor the Chronicler in the beginning of the 12 century. Thus, Nestor tells of the treacherous murder of Prince Vladimir's sons - the brothers Prince Boris and Gleb - by their elder brother Svyatopolk in the struggle for the throne of Kiev.

Historically no one can deny that Kievan Rus was the cradle of Russian statehood and today's Ukrainians are its direct successors. Whatever motives Putin may have put forward to justify a special punitive attitude towards Ukraine, his actions can be seen as treacherous. Russia and Ukraine's current problems stem from the fact that after the collapse of the USSR, which continued to be called Russia in the West after the October revolution and all citizens of the Empire were Russians, Moscow was unwilling to recognize the real independence of Ukraine as well as other post-Soviet countries.

If Putin had followed his own thesis of brotherly co-existence between eastern Slavic states (referring to the co-existence of monolingual but sovereign states such as Austria and Germany, the US and Canada) he could also claim to be a brother and count on brotherly relations. In reality, Russia, after it gave up the Empire, couldn't give up its imperial attitude even towards its ethnic cousins.

But once again let us turn to the history. A full Russian statehood began to form in Kiev, and it was based on Orthodoxy. Without a written code, a code of laws and a single ideology, based on a single religion, it is difficult to speak of the state.  Orthodoxy became the new spiritual core of the Eastern Slavs, the basic writing and legislation.

 We do not know for certain what was the language of the local Slavs (Velikorosses, Malorosses, Belorusses), as we have no written monuments of pre-Christian Rus.

The probability remains that the languages of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were more distant from each other before the advent of Orthodoxy. Church Slavonic (Old Slavonic), which could have been based on Serbian or Proto-Bulgarian, became a unifying local language. The Bible and holy books were written in that language and distributed in Kievan Rus by Christian missionaries Cyril and Methodius.

It was in this Church Slavonic that chronicles, law books and correspondence were written. But that doesn't mean that they reflected the living languages of the local Slavs. On the contrary, as with the role of Church Latin in Western Europe, it is more likely that Church Slavonic was the source of a unification of the local languages and dialects. The closest thing to Old Church Slavonic in terms of pronunciation is Ukrainian. This may confirm that it is Ukrainians who are the direct heirs of Kievan Rus' and maintain this continuity both religiously and mentally, rather than Muscovy, which has been trying unsuccessfully for centuries to play the role of third Rome and leader of the eastern Slavs.

From this point of view, today the story of Sviatopolk, Gleb and Boris is repeating itself. It is not yet clear who will play the role of Yaroslav and who, according to Nestor, avenged the deaths of his brothers and continued to rule wisely in line with the ethics of his father Vladimir. And there is no telling how far the fratricidal war in Ukraine will go. If one follows the concept of the trinity, it should embrace the whole eastern space. It already happened in the history of Russia, Little Russia and Belarus, when blood ran like a river at the hands of the Reds, Whites, monarchists, anarchists and other movements during the Civil War of 1917-22, which finalized in the collapse of the Empire.

Mehman Aliyev