Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

A Russian nationalist, wearing a -shirt promoting the Soviet Union, carries the Russian flag during the May 9 Victory Day celebration on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). Yaroslav Debelyi Russia and Ukraine have quarreled over a lot of things in recent years, from politics and energy to language and religion.

Now they are again at odds - this time over history.

Saturday marks the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, a victory for Czar Peter the Great that symbolized the rise of the Russian empire and crushed Ukraine's hopes for independence for most of the next three centuries.

Both Russia and Ukraine are marking the anniversary, but their views of its significance are diametrically opposed. The row threatens to escalate tensions between the two former Soviet countries, whose clash over gas prices in January left millions of Europeans without gas for heating and cooking.

The historical squabble reflects the larger cultural and political struggle by Moscow to reclaim its political and economic influence over Ukraine, as well as Kiev's attempts to break free of Russia and integrate with the West.

Ukraine wants to honor Ivan Mazepa, the powerful hetman, or leader, of the Cossack state, the precursor of modern-day Ukraine, which enjoyed limited autonomy as a Russian protectorate.
Kiev hails Mazepa as a hero for his attempt - albeit a failed one - to liberate his people from Russian dominance by allying himself with Sweden in the 1709 battle at Poltava, east of the present day capital of Kiev in central Ukraine.

The battle was a turning point in a prolonged war between Russia and Sweden over military and political supremacy over northern Europe, which Russia eventually won.

Russia's Foreign Ministry last month warned Ukraine against glorifying Mazepa.

"We would like to remind the Ukrainian leadership that playing games with history, especially with a nationalistic undertone, has never led to anything good," the statement said.

Russian historian Vladimir Artamonov of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Russian History Institute calls Mazepa a "traitor," arguing that he betrayed not only the Russian czar but his own people.

A victory for Swedish king Charles XII, Artamonov contends, would have brought Ukraine under the influence of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, then dominated by Sweden - meaning Ukraine would simply have traded one master for another.

"Anybody who fought against Russia is treated as a hero" in Ukraine, Artamonov said.

President Viktor Yushchenko says that Ukraine has the right to name and honor its own heroes.

"They tell us that that we have a joint history (with Russia), but no, each has its own history," Yushchenko told foreign reporters earlier this month.

Russia paints Mazepa as a scheming opportunist who betrayed his overlord, Peter the Great, to fight alongside the Swedes. Ukrainian authorities plan to erect monuments to Mazepa in Poltava and Kiev and his stern face with its thick black mustache adorns the 10 hryvna bill.

Despite Mazepa's defection, Russia won the battle, one of the keys to it eclipsing Sweden as a leading European power. Moscow continued to gradually chip away at the Ukrainian Cossacks' autonomy until Empress Catherine the Great fully absorbed the region into her empire in late 18th century. After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution Ukraine became a Soviet republic and gained independence amid the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Ukrainian historians and officials say Mazepa's rebellion represented Ukraine's historic yearning for independence.

Yuriy Mytsyk, a historian with the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, calls Mazepa a hero, comparing him to the first U.S. President George Washington, who fought Britain's King George III for America's independence.

Vladislav Verstyuk, deputy head of the government's Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, said that Russia's accusations of historical inaccuracy are merely an attempt to reclaim its geopolitical dominance over a former province.

"Politically speaking, it's all about whether Ukraine will remain under a tougher influence from Moscow and Russia or it will slowly but surely drift toward Europe," Verstyuk said.

The Mazepa controversy is the latest in a series of academic and political clashes over the two countries' intertwined history.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently established a history commission aimed at countering what he calls efforts by Ukraine and other foreign nations to falsify Russian history.
Russia has angrily rejected Ukraine's claims that a Soviet-era famine, which killed millions, was an act of genocide, saying others ethnic groups also suffered. Moscow also protests the honoring of Ukrainian insurgents who briefly sided with the Nazis during World War II and then fought against both Hitler's forces and the Red Army.