Roughly and I mean roughly
(1) There were a people spread out over europe beyond the pripet marches, they were known as Rus living in seperate city states ( like the greeks )
(2) They were centred around kiev and adopted the Orthodox religeon and the cyrillic alphabet.
(3) Along came the Mongols and destroyed everything.
(4)Eventually the western and southern lands came under the control of the catholic poles. and the Eastern Rus centred around Moscow obtained their freedom from the Golden horde. The extreme south came under Islamic control.
(5) There were many revolts by the western and southern Rus against alien western control. Eventually the eastern Rus rescued them and they became one people again the Russians. But of couse the long years of seperation meant that different DIALECTS had emergeged such as 'ukraine'
(6) The combined Rus then cleared the Turks out of the extreme south and it was settled by the descendents of Kevian Rus in the west and East Rus in naturally in the east.
(7) when the commies took power, who were by and large members of ethnic minorities, in order to curb the Rus they created the artificial nation of Ukraine and Belarus