For thousands of years, the lands known today as Russia and Ukraine were inhabited by nomadic
tribes and mysterious Bronze Age cultures.
The only record they left were their graves.
In the great open grasslands of the south, the steppe, they buried their chieftains beneath
huge mounds called kurgans.
The Ancient Greek historian Herodotus called these people 'Scythians'.
Their lands were overrun by the same nomadic warriors who brought down the Roman Empire.
The land was then settled by Slavs.
They shared some language and culture, but were divided into many different tribes.
Vikings from Scandinavia, known in the east as Varangians, rowed up Russia's long rivers
on daring raids and trading expeditions.
According to legend, the East Slavs asked a Varangian chief named Rurik to be their
prince and unite the tribes.
He accepted and made his capital at Novgorod.
His dynasty, the Rurikids, would rule Russia for 700 years.
His people called themselves the Rus, and gave their name to the land.
Rurik's successor, Oleg, captured Kiev, making it the capital of a new state, Kievan Rus.
A century later, seeking closer ties with the Byzantine Empire to the south, Vladimir
the Great adopted their religion, and converted to Orthodox Christianity.
He is still venerated today as the man who brought Christianity to Ukraine and Russia.
Yaroslav the Wise codified laws and conquered new lands.
His reign marked the golden age of Kievan Rus.
It was amongst the most sophisticated and powerful states in Europe.
But after Yaroslav's death his sons fought amongst themselves.
Kievan Rus disintegrated into a patchwork of feuding princedoms...
just as a deadly new threat emerged from the east.
The Mongols under Genghis Khan had overrun much of Asia.
Now they launched a great raid across the Caucasus Mountains, and defeated the Kievan
princes at the Battle of the Kalka River, but then withdrew.
14 years later, the Mongols returned.
A gigantic army led by Batu Khan overran the land.
Cities that resisted were burnt, their people slaughtered.
The city of Novgorod was spared because it submitted to the Mongols.
Its prince, Alexander Nevsky, then saved the city again, defeating the Teutonic Knights
at the Battle of the Ice, fought above a frozen lake.
He remains one of Russia's most revered heroes.
The Mongols ruled the land as conquerors.
Their new empire was called the Golden Horde, ruled by a Khan from his new capital at Sarai.
The Rus princes were his vassals.
They were forced to pay tribute or suffer devastating reprisal raids.
They called their oppressors 'Tatars' - they lived under 'the Tatar yoke'.
Alexander Nevsky's son, Daniel, founded the Grand Principality of Moscow, which quickly
grew in power.
Under the great Uzbeg Khan, the Tatars converted to Islam.
A rising power, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, defeated the Tatars at the Battle of Blue
Waters, and conquered Kiev.
18 years later, Dmitri Donskoi, Grand Prince of Moscow, also defeated the Tartars... at
the great Battle of Kulikovo Field.
After years of infighting, the Golden Horde now began to disintegrate into rival khanates.
Constantinople, capital and last outpost of the once-great Byzantine Empire, fell to the
Turkish Ottoman Empire.
Some hailed Moscow as the 'Third Rome', the seat of Orthodox Christian faith, now Rome
and Constantinople had fallen.
Meanwhile, the Grand Princes of Moscow continued to expand their power, annexing Novgorod,
and forging the first Russian state.
At the Ugra River, Ivan III of Moscow faced down the Tatar army and forced it to retreat.
Russia had finally cast off the 'Tatar yoke'.
Under Grand Prince Vasili III, Moscow continued to grow in size and power.
His son, Ivan IV, was crowned the first Tsar of Russia.
He would be remembered as Ivan the Terrible.
Ivan conquered Tatar lands in Kazan and Astrakahan, but was defeated in the Livonian War by Sweden
and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Ivan's modernising reforms gave way to a reign of terror and mass executions, fuelled by
his violent paranoia.
Russia was still vulnerable.
Raiders from the Crimean Khanate were able to burn Moscow itself.
But the next year Russian forces routed the Tatars at Molodi, just south of the city.
Cossacks now lived on the open steppe, a lawless region between three warring states.
They were skilled horsemen who lived freely, and were often recruited by Russia and Poland
to fight as mercenaries.
Ivan the Terrible's own son, the Tsarevich, fell victim to one of his father's violent
rages - bludgeoned to death with the royal sceptre.
The Cossack adventurer Yermak Timofeyevich led the Russian conquest of Siberia, defeating
Tatars and subjugating indigenous tribes.
In the north, Archangelsk was founded, for the time being Russia's only sea-port linking
it to western Europe, though it was icebound in winter.
Ivan the Terrible was succeeded by his son Feodor I, who died childless.
It was the end of the Rurikid dynasty.
Ivan's advisor Boris Godunov became Tsar.
But after his sudden death, his widow and teenage son were brutally murdered, and the
throne seized by an impostor claiming to be Ivan the Terrible's son.
He too was soon murdered.
Russia slid into anarchy, the so-called 'Time of Troubles'.
Rebels and foreign armies laid waste to the land, and the population was decimated by
famine and plague.
Polish troops occupied Moscow; Swedish troops seized Novgorod.
The Russian state seemed on the verge of extinction.
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