
Originally Posted by
alexsms
Anticipating an ardent debate and argument, especially since the name of Stalin has been mentioned, I may quickly suggest some considerations on q.2.
Kiev, the present capital of Ukraine, was the first known center of Eastern Slavic activity. So it was inhabited by Slavs long before Moscow and what is today's central European part of Russia. Kiev is often dubbed as The Cradle of the Slavic culture. The term historians have been using is Киевская Русь.
Certainly, there could not be a word Ukranian and Ukraine (which is a modern word) at that time. As you know one the traditional etimologies of the word Украина is The Frontier Land (край), meaning the frontier of the land (state).
So people of Eastern Slavic origin (ancestors of today's Ukranians, Belarussians, and Russians) settled in Kiev and created a culture there prior to moving in all directions (west, south and north) due to a number of reasons (such as raids by nomads of Turkic origin).