If by "pretty much always" you want to completely ignore the period where large part of it used to be Polish, then sure. Pretty much always.

The entire western section of Ukraine was Polish before WW2.

Haven’t Polands borders been moved like a million times though.

Name one European country that hasn't had its borders moved a million times lol.

Don't forget the Mongols. I believe they were around for a few centuries.

This is the reason why we should never redraw lines on a map over historical claims. It gets messy fast.

Well, "Kievan Rus" was Ukraine centric state, as the name says.

Moscow, and future tsarist Imperial Russia, happened much later

> Ukraine was pretty much always at least partially owned by russia. One of the first centralized slavic states were the kieven rus.

This is wrong on so many levels :)

In times of Kievan Rus Moscow was a far province of forests and marches. Kyiv was the capital.

What you're saying basically: "Italy (Ukraine) was always owned by France (Russia) because Roman Empire (Kievan Rus) was the first centralized state there".

If you insist on applying modern names to historical states it was the other way around - Ukraine "owned" Russia back then.

Also for a few centuries Ukraine was owned by Mongols, Lithuanians and Poles. And Russia was only starting to exist (and wasn't called Russia at first - just Muscovy). But that's besides the point.

I think it's up to Ukrainians to say if it's offensive to them (probably).

Is it wrong? I don't know, is it wrong to call the Sun cold, or the Universe small? Maybe not. Googling "russian ukraine" will not result with articles about Ukraine, it will result with news about the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Can you point to some respectable sources that use the term "Russian Ukraine"?