Earlier this year, Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Putin spent much of that interview giving his version of the history of Ukraine.

What is happening is to a certain extent an element of a civil war.

Everyone in the West thinks that the Russian people have been split by hostilities forever. They will be reunited.

So, just what is the history of Ukraine? Is it an invention, as Vladimir Putin suggested,

or is it a reality with its own distinctive national identity? Putin's claim is that Ukraine

is inherently Russian territory. That's a claim that requires two pieces of support. First,

the idea that Ukraine is historically Russian-controlled and Russian-populated,

and second, that Ukraine today has no claim to its independence.

Let's see whether either of these claims stands up to scrutiny.

Vladimir Putin begins his history lesson in 862, with the townspeople of Novgorat in

Oblast in Russia today, inviting a Varangian Prince Rurik from Scandinavia to reign.

The Varangians were Viking warrior traitors.

Rurik's successor, Prince Oleg, came to Kiev in 882, proclaiming it the capital of Kievan Rus.

Approximately 100 years later, Vladimir the Great introduced and adopted Eastern Orthodoxy

across his realm.

This is Putin's history, and this part is certainly true.

As we can see here, the territory of Kievan Rusz span some of today's Russia,

today's Belarus, and some of today's Ukraine.

It did not include either

the Donbass region or Crimea, but Kievan Rus fell apart in the 11th and 12th centuries,

breaking into a series of principalities, and in the 13th century, Kevin Russe was overrun by the

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