[citation needed] One of the most prominent Russians in Medieval Ukraine (at that time the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) was Ivan Fyodorov, who published the Ostrog Bible and called himself a Muscovite.

In 1599, Tsar Boris Godunov ordered the construction of Tsareborisov on the banks of Oskol River, the first city and the first fortress in Eastern Ukraine.

More Russian speakers appeared in northern, central and eastern Ukrainian territories during the late 17th century, following the Cossack Rebellion led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

Following the Treaty of Pereyaslav, Ukrainian Cossacks lands, including the modern northern and eastern parts of Ukraine, became a protectorate of the Tsardom of Russia.

This brought the first significant, but still small, wave of Russian settlers into central Ukraine (primarily several thousand soldiers stationed in garrisons,[5] out of a population of approximately 1.2 million non-Russians).

[7] At the same time, the discovery of coal in the Donets Basin also marked the commencement of a large-scale industrialization and an influx of workers from other parts of the Russian Empire.

[citation needed] The population of Novorossiya eventually became intermixed, and with Russification being the state policy, the Russian identity dominated in mixed families and communities.

[citation needed] In the beginning of the 20th century, Russians were the largest ethnic group in the following cities: Kiev (54.2%), Kharkov (63.1%), Odessa (49.09%), Nikolayev (66.33%), Mariupol (63.22%), Lugansk (68.16%), Berdyansk (66.05%), Kherson (47.21%), Melitopol (42.8%), Yekaterinoslav (41.78%), Yelizavetgrad (34.64%), Pavlograd (34.36%), Simferopol (45.64%), Feodosiya (46.84%), Yalta (66.17%), Kerch (57.8%), Sevastopol (63.46%), Chuguev (86%).

Thus, when the Central Rada officials were outlining the future borders of the new Ukrainian state they took the results of the census in regards to the language and religion as determining factors.

The ethnographic borders of Ukraine thus turned out to be almost twice as large as the original Bohdan Khmelnytsky State incorporated into the Russian Empire during the 17-18th centuries.

[11] In Ukraine's case, both threats came, respectively, from the south and the east: Novorossiya with its historically strong Russian cultural influence, and the traditional Ukrainian center and west.

These considerations brought about a policy of Ukrainization, to simultaneously break the remains of the Great Russian attitude and to gain popularity among the Ukrainian population, thus recognizing their dominance of the republic.

[6] Consequently, many changes introduced during the Ukrainization period were reversed: Russian language schools, libraries and newspapers were restored and even increased in number.

Near the end of the War, the entire population of Crimean Tatars (numbering up to a quarter of a million) was expelled from their homeland in Crimea to Central Asia, under accusations of collaborations with Germans.

[6] In 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued the decree on the transfer of the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.

[19] Controversies and legality of the transfer remained a sore point in relations between Ukraine and Russia for a few years, and in particular in the internal politics in Crimea.

[39] After the Euromaidan events,[40] regions with a large ethnic Russian populations became the scene of Anti-Maidan protests and Russian-backed separatist activity.

[42][43][44] The regional council in Luhansk, in which the party of ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich held an absolute majority, voted to demand granting the Russian language the status as second official language, stopping ″the persecution of Berkut fighters″, disarming Maidan self-defense units and banning a number far-right political organizations like Svoboda and UNA-UNSO.

[citation needed] Notable examples are Ilya Ponomaryov (the only member of parliament who voted against the annexation of Crimea), journalists Matvey Ganapolsky, Arkadiy Babchenko, Evgeny Kiselyov, Alexander Nevzorov and others.

According to the statistics presented by the United Nation's Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2014 approximately 140 Russians applied for political asylum in Ukraine.

[71][72] According to annual surveys by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences 43.9% to 52.0% of the total population of Ukraine supports the idea of granting the status of state language to Russian.

[76] The Christian Science Monitor reported: "The [adoption of this bill] only served to infuriate Russian-speaking regions, [who] saw the move as more evidence that the antigovernment protests in Kiev that toppled Yanukovich's government were intent on pressing for a nationalistic agenda.

The move has been widely condemned by the international community as needlessly provocative as it forces the historically bilingual population of 45 million people who use Russian and Ukrainian interchangeably as mother tongues to become monolingual.

[82]The Unian reported that "A ban on the use of cultural products, namely movies, books, songs, etc., in the Russian language in the public has been introduced" in the Lviv Oblast in September 2018.

[citation needed] Several factors have affected this – most Russians lived in urban centres in Soviet times and thus were hit the hardest by the economic hardships of the 1990s.

[citation needed] Political parties whose electoral platforms are crafted specifically to cater to the Russian voters' sentiments fared exceptionally well.

In the 2012 parliamentary election Party of Regions again won 30% and the largest number of seats while Fatherland (successor to Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc) came second with 25.54%.

[116] Both movements' registration and legal status have been challenged in courts; and the leader of Proryv, a Russian citizen, was expelled from Ukraine, declared persona non grata and barred from entering the country again.

[citation needed] Alexander Dugin, the Moscow-based leader of the ESM and his associate Pavel Zariffulin have also been barred from travelling to Ukraine because of their involvement in the activities of these organizations, although bans have been later lifted and reinstated again.

[121] The publications and protest actions of these organizations feature strongly pro-Russian and radically anti-NATO messages, invoking the rhetoric of "Ukrainian-Russian historic unity", "NATO criminality", and other similar claims.