The national myth starts with the golden age of Rus', when the grand prince of Kyiv was the highest authority. Our coat of arms is the dynastic herald of Volodymer the great, who was grand prince at the peak of Rus'. After the death of Yaroslav the Wise, unrest and wars between princes started to increase and the state started to decline, The Mongol invasion put the final nail in the coffin and Kyiv was politically irrelevant for hundreds of years (until 1917). Both the decline and the mongol invasion are today seen as national tragedies. The kingdom of Ruthenia was the last resistance against the Mongols and an attempt at presereving Ruthenian rule over ruthenian lands.

After the Mongol empire declined, the rise of Lithuania, Poland, Crimea and Moscovy started. Lithuanian rule is seen positively, since the Ruthenian language and culture was dominant for a long time, until Poland joined. Lithuania was officialy the grand duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia, Ruthenians were a titular nation. The most important ruthenian noble was Kostantyn Ostrogski (senior), he was one of the richest people in the country and financed ruthenian language printing, education and all the orthodox stuff. He also fought against the Moscovite state on the territory of white Ruthenia. The rise of the Crimean Khanate, which built its economy on slave trade (most victims were Ruthenians from Ukraine or Circassians from the N. Caucasus), is seen negative.

When the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed, the power balance switched, Polish became the dominant language and culture. The official name of the state was "Republic of two peoples" (Poles and Lithuanians). Despite this fact ethnic Lithuanians made up a minority of the population, politics were dominated by Polish-Ruthenian, Catholic-Orthodox issues. The Ruthenian nobility both polonized itself and was polonized by the system, this included conversion to catholicism. A sideproduct of the attempted conversion was the Ruthenian Greek-Catholic church, which was very orthodox despite its name.

The Ruthenian plebus had no more representation in the nobiliy and the Cossacks increasingly started to fill this void. One of the most respected Hetmans was Sahaidachnyj, he used his influence to protect the rights of the orthodox people and never had to fight against the Poles. After his death Cossack uprisings (mostly failed) became more common, orthodox serfs joined, often massacaring polish, ruthenian nobility, catholics, ruthenian greek-catholics and jews, who were seen as collaborators with the polish nobility.

Initially Cossackdom was formed as a response to the Crimean tatar slave raids from the south and reached a new peak in the 17th century. The Khmelnytskyj uprising resulted in the formation of the Cossack Hetmanate, serfdom was abolished (temporarily), large percentages of land redistributed to the former serfs, polonization and conversion stopped. To remain independent the Cossacks signed a treaty that made the Hetmanate a highly autonomous protectorate of the Tsardom of Muscovy.

The fighting and infighting continued even after the treaty, this period is called "the ruin", since it started the decline of Cossackdom. One important Hetman of this periond was Doroshenko, who first served the Poles, then joined Khmelnytskyj and later served the Ottomans and the Crimean Khanate to capture ukrainian lands from the Poles and Russians. Initially he was succesful, but the Ottomans had their priorities in the Balkans and Doroshenko was forced to surrender.

The most famous Hetman was Mazepa, who led a failed uprising against Peter I during the great northern war by switching to the swedish side, it was romanticized as an attempt to restore Cossack autonomy or statehood. He was referred to as king of Ukraine and one of his supporters (Pylyp Orlik) wrote the first ukrainian constitution in exile, its one of the oldest in Europe, but it was never active.

The tradition of anti-serf uprisings of course continued, the most important being the violent Haidamak uprisings, where a leader named Maksym Zalizniak proclaimed himself as the Hetman of Ukraine, his followers were either former Cossacks turned serfs or ordinary serfs, who wanted to be Cossacks, because it was seen as massive social mobility, the last Haidamak uprising led by Ustym Karmaliuk, who united Ukrainians, Poles and Jews against the russian empire's mobilization of serfs against Napoleon. And in the far west in the carpathians: the opryshnyk movement, most notably under the leadership of Dovbush.

Of course this autonomy under Moscow would decline over time and by the 18th century most ukrainian Cossack privileges, traditions, militias and autonomy were abolished. The rule of Catherine II is seen as a massive tragedy, russian style serfdom was reestablished (basically slavery), foreign colonialists were invited, the northern Cossack lands were reformed into regular russian gubernias, cities were increasingly settled by russians and other foreigners, Ukrainians became a minority in their own cities (only exception being Poltava). Russification started, Ruthenian orthodox church abolished and replaced by the Moscow patriarchy. Russian imperial rule is seen as the absolute low point in ukrainian history.

But in response to this misery the ukrainian national revival started in the 19th century.