Russia and Ukraine trace the origins of their two civilizations to a common ancestor, the flourishing medieval state of Kyivan Rus. That kingdom, growing around Kyiv from the tenth century AD, became an eastern outpost of European culture after its king Volodymyr somewhat arbitrarily decided to convert his people from paganism to Orthodox Christianity. Ukrainians like to point out that his son Yaroslav the Wise built Kyiv’s iconic St. Sophia Cathedral in 1037, when Moscow was little more than a forest by the Volga River.
