Golden Age of Kiev (800–1100)
During the tenth and eleventh centuries the territory of Ukraine became the centre of a powerful and prestigious state in Europe, the Kievan Rus, laying the foundation for the national identity of Ukrainians, as well as other East Slavic nations, through subsequent centuries. Its capital was Kiev, the capital of modern Ukraine, wrestled from Khazars by Askold and Dir in about 860. According to the Primary Chronicle, the Kievan Rus' elite initially consisted of Varangians from Scandinavia. The Varangians later became assimilated into the local Slavic population and gave the Rus' its first powerful dynasty, the Rurik Dynasty.
Kievian Rus' was comprised from several principalities, ruled by the interrelated Rurikid Princes. The seat of Kiev, the most prestigious and influential of all principalities, became a subject of many rivalries between Rurikids as the most valuable prize in their quest for power, sometimes through intrigue but often through bloody conflicts. The Golden Age of Kievan Rus' falls on the years of Kiev being ruled by Vladimir the Great (Volodymyr, 980–1015) who turned Rus' towards the Byzantine Christianity and his son Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054) during whose lengthy reign, Kievan Rus' reached a zenith of its cultural flowering and military power that was followed by the state's increasing fragmentation as the relative importance of regions rose again. After the one last resurgence under the rule of Vladimir Monomakh 1113–1125 and his son Mstislav (1125–1132) the Kievan Rus' finally disintegrated into the separate principalities following Mstislav's death. The thirteenth century Mongol invasion dealt Rus' a final blow from which it never recovered.
