How Many Degrees Are You Separated From Ukraine?
My daughter-in-law's late grandfather was born there and he fought with the Germans against Russia in WWII.
= new reply since forum marked as read
But I am very old and the maps were different back then and what is now Ukraine was in different countries.
Talking pre-WWI borders for them all.
Still in contact with cousins and second cousins who live there now.
March 9, 2015
For the past year, Ukraine has been plunged into chaos. Mass protests against pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych led to his ouster in February 2014. That sparked a spiralling crisis: a fledgling interim government in Kiev looked on as Russia first seized and then annexed the territory of Crimea, a strategic Black Sea peninsula. A pro-Russian separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, believed to have direct backing from Moscow, has led to the deaths of thousands since.
To some, Ukraine has become the geopolitical faultline between the liberal democratic West and authoritarian, neo-imperial Russia under President Vladimir Putin. Foreign policy luminaries in Washington openly discuss the current state of affairs as a new Cold War. Beneath the political divisions of the present lies a country's deep, complex past. The land that's now Ukraine has long been dear to Russian nationalists. But it has also been home to a host of other peoples and empires. Its shifting borders and overlapping histories all have echoes in the current heated moment. What follows is a sketch of how Ukraine became Ukraine over 1,300 years of history, mapped by The Washington Post's cartographer Gene Thorp. Ukraine's modern borders are outlined in green throughout.
8th century to 13th century
The "Rus" -- the people whose name got tacked on to Russia -- were originally Scandinavian traders and settlers who made their way from the Baltic Sea through the marshes and forests of Eastern Europe down toward the fertile riverlands of what's now Ukraine. Other Viking adventurers journeyed to Constantinople, the great capital of the Byzantine Empire, to find their fortune -- sometimes as hired muscle.
The first major center of the "Rus" was at Kiev, established in the 9th century. In 988, Vladimir, a prince of the Kievan Rus, was baptized by a Byzantine priest in the old Greek colony of Khersonesos on the Crimean coast. His conversion marked the advent of Orthodox Christianity among the Rus and remains a moment of great nationalist symbolism for Russians. Putin invoked this older Vladimir in a speech last December when justifying his annexation of Crimea. Successive Mongol invasions beginning in the 13th century subdued Kiev's influence, and led eventually to the rise of other Rus settlements to the north, including Moscow. The Turkic descendants of the Mongol Golden Horde formed their own Khanate along the northern rim of the Black Sea.
1650 to 1812................
snip
Cheers
the last 5 maps are at the link. cannot post more than 4 paragraphs per DU TOS
... but boy, do I admire their guts and determination.
Borders weren't the same back then so it may have been part of Poland. The family ended up in a small town in what is now Belarus. Hubby's grandfather was a Russian soldier, here in the US buying guns for WWI when the Russian Revolution broke out.
He was never able to go home.
2. Nephew was raised in Switzerland. He is getting a master's degree in forestry and did an internship in the Carpathian Mountains. He just sent us a photo yesterday of 2 of his fellow internees - 2 Ukrainian brothers who have returned to Ukraine for military service.
