I've welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit.

We've got an episode of our sibling podcast now for you lucky people.

I'm in the Antarctic, so here's an episode of Gone Medieval with Matt Lewis.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we thought it would be interesting to look at the origins of the city of Kiev,

how the Rus people emerged, the arrival of the Mongol horde into the region.

And the historical relationship between what is now Russia and what is now Ukraine.

I'm joined today by Professor Dr. Alekka Phevny, lecturer in Ukrainian and Slavonic studies at the University of Cambridge,

to talk about the region around Ukraine during the medieval period,

and to try and add some depth to our understanding of what happened then and maybe what's happening today.

Thank you for joining us Alekka.

It's my question.

It's wonderful to have you with us.

To start off with, what do we know about the region around Kiev before it was settled by the Rus people?

Was there a cohesive body there or was it a disparate collection of peoples and tribes?

So one of our issues is that we know very little about the Slavic people in the beginning.

So we think the area that is today, the eastern Slavic world,

so the area north of the Carpathian regions was settled sometime in the sixth century by a group of peoples

that we refer to as Slavs, who spoke a common language.

So usually referred to as common Slavics, common language.

And they settled in the area north of the Carpathian mountains.

And from there they spread to Central Europe.

And the language of the Slavs became distinguished into three different groups.

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