Not really. The Rus empire was a thing, capital was Kyiv. It was a decently large empire that encompassed most of eastern Europe. It certainly encompased Mos

Not really. The Rus empire was a thing, capital was Kyiv. It was a decently large empire that encompassed most of eastern Europe. It certainly encompased Moscow, Novgorod, etc... It eventually fell to the Mongols. 2 centuries later Moscow overthrew the Mongols and reunited (and grew) the empire. There's no continuous history per se, but east slavic peoples (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian) have always been essentially the same people. The Rus and Russian empires were the same people even if there was an interruption and the capital changed because of historic circumstances. When my family came to North-America from the Austro-Hungarian empire, they were even known as Rusyn/Ruthenian (they're Ukrainian)... No one has ever disputed that the modern Russian empire represented the same people as the (Kyivan) Rus empire until very recently. Like, I know a bunch of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks and they can all more or less understand each other. Slavs are far more similar than different (language, culture, food, temperament, etc...). Edit - it's ok to admit a shared history while also wanting some countries that weren't historically independent to stay independent and forge a new national identity. Trying to rewrite history is petty.