The common history of Russia and Ukraine

I this chronicle the shared history of Ukraine and Russia is being described from the Stone-Age till the present..Ukraine is now in a critical phase of it's existence. In the 11 century AD Kiev was the pearl of Europe, bigger in those era than Paris or London. In 1240 the city was sacked by Baku Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan. The inhabitants were slaughtered or deported as slaves. After that Kiev became a marginal provincial city for about 600 years. From the 19th century it was reanimated and developed again by Catharina the Great and it grew into a dynamic city with millions of inhabitants. The author was present in Februari 2014 during the US lead coup d'etat in Kiev which brought the country no good. In those days Frank already predicted the current proxywar and concluded that Ukraine would be far better off in joining Russia and Belarus in a (economic) confederation than with the EU and the US.