Grand Prince of Kiev

[7] At least during the 8th and 9th centuries Kiev functioned as an outpost of the Khazar empire (a hill-fortress, called Sambat, "high place" in Old Turkic).

[12] Kiev was captured by Askold and Dir, whose existence is also debatable, and are called "boyars" who "did not belong to [Rurik's] family" by the Primary Chronicle.

[14] Thomas Noonan asserts that one of the Rus "sea-kings", the "High king", adopted the title khagan in the early 9th century.

[22] Most significantly, the Nachal'nyy svod (found only in the Novgorod First Chronicle) never mentions any of these peace treaties, and never calls Oleg, Igor or Sviatoslav a velikiy knyaz.

[25] The oldest surviving source available is Hilarion of Kiev's Sermon on Law and Grace (c. 1040s), which calls Volodimer a kagan (a Khazar title) rather than a knyaz.

[25] Some scholars have suggested that this indicates Kievan Rus' had won its independence from the Khazars in the early 10th century, and had inherited the title of kagan from them, before exchanging it for knyaz later.

[28] Moreover, he has been stigmatised by chroniclers with the nickname "the Accursed" or "the Damned" (okayannyy) because of how he violently rose to power in the war of succession following Volodimir's death in 1015.

[31] The reason why the system of succession did not always work as Yaroslav intended was because some princes simply usurped power through a coup d'état at the court in Kiev.

[32] The 1097 Council of Liubech upgraded the dynastic capitals of the inner circle of senior princes to grand principalities as well, but still acknowledged the superiority of Kiev.

Due to the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' 1240, Michael of Chernigov left Kiev to seek military assistance from King Béla IV of Hungary.

In 1321, after the battle on the Irpin River, Gediminas installed Mindgaugas, one of his subjects from the house of Olshanski, a descendant of the family of Vseslav of Polotsk that was exiled to the Byzantine Empire.