Belarus–Ukraine relations
Belarus–Ukraine relations (, "Byelaruska-ŭkrainskiya adnosiny", , "Ukrains'ko-Bilorus'ki vidnosyny", , "Belorussko-ukrainskiye otnosheniya") are foreign relations between Belarus and Ukraine. Both countries were successively ruled by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Second Polish Republic, and ultimately, the Russian Empire. Prior to the 1991 breakup, both countries were part of the Soviet Union as the Belarusian SSR and Ukrainian SSR when they were the founding members of the United Nations in 1945. Being Slavic nations, both Belarus and Ukraine share closely related cultures and are predominantly inhabited by the East Slavic ethnic groups of Belarusians and Ukrainians respectively, along with a few Russians. Today, the two countries share an 891–km border.
All-Russian nation
In the post-Soviet period, Russia preoccupied itself with recreating a national identity based either on Soviet or pre-Soviet traditions. Russian diplomats and even Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin have continued to exert the claim that Russians and Ukrainians "are one nation," "one people," and "fraternal." Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has likewise referred to Ukraine as a "brotherly country." According to historian Timothy D. Snyder, "The dangerous fantasy is the Russian idea that Ukraine is not really a different country, but rather a kind of Slavic younger brother. This is a legacy of the late Soviet Union and the russification policies of the 1970s. It has no actual historical basis: east Slavic statehood arose in what is now Ukraine and was copied in Moscow, and the early Russian Empire was itself highly dependent upon educated inhabitants of Ukraine."