Kievan Rus! The mighty empire!

[StasUA]

Ok Yulia, but I do not know much about it I just thought it would be a good idea to discuss it here, I know some things... But not exact things... I think that eastern Ukrainian lands during Kievan Rus period, was not farther then present "Volgograd" in Russia, and northern a little bit northen then present Moscow, but western I dont know... Southern ended on Nortehrn Crimea, actually Crimea really does not belongs to Ukraine historically, but many other Russian lands do. Crimea was taken from Turkish by Russians not Ukrainian ;( But Ukrainian Kozaks won many battles there, and once burned out Bahchisaray, and freed all Ukrainian slaves.

[johnstruthers]

Just looking at the Great Gates of Kiev, and realizing that this was the entrance to the capital of the kingdom, is awe-inspiring. That this was a thousand years ago...when people were still drawing water from the Kraschatik in buckets...

[StasUA]

Yes, and there were other gates that survived, but were demolished by communists... I remember how I always stood there looking at them, and imagining some battle with mongols, how our warriors fought there, and how many warriors bled there, and died there... Kievan Rus had no stones, so we were unable to built huge stone walls and castles that would've survived. But those wooden walls were pretty good, but it was easy to put them on fire so they probably had to rebuilt walls after a battle.
Karpatian Mountains made Galicia strong, because they used stones.