DISINFO: Lenin created Ukraine and added Donbas to it
SUMMARY
Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin changed the course of world history, but he made a mistake. He gave statehood to Ukraine for some reason. He also added Donbas to it. He did it in order to increase the proletarian component among the predominantly petty-bourgeois rural population of these territories.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the disintegration of Ukraine, which tries to portray the country as a state artificially created by the Bolsheviks and whose independence is questioned. This claim was made in the context of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine is recognised by international law as a sovereign nation-state with its own flag, citizenship, language and a delimited territory. Ukraine possesses all the elements of a sovereign and independent country such as a legislature, a president, a government and other symbols of power.
Ukraine is a well-defined nation-state that emerged after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its sovereignty and independence were supported by the vast majority of the Ukrainian people. The Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine was adopted on 16 July 1990, more than a year before the collapse of the former USSR. On 1 December 1991, a referendum was held, in which 90.32 per cent of the voters approved the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine.
The history of Ukraine dates back to the era of the Kyivan Rus in the 9th-13th. Kyiv was a principal city back then, to which other surrounding city states including Moscow were closely linked. Moscow as well as some other present-day Russian cities were governed, albeit partially, from Kyiv. Due to a variety of historical reasons, Kyiv’s importance declined over the centuries, the Russian Empire subjugated Ukraine and finally turned it into a colony in the 18th century.
Putin frequently resorts to this narrative to lay pseudo-historical grounds for Russia’s completely unprovoked and unjustified large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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