Historian Oleksandr Palii refuted the words of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, that the modern Russian people are the inheritors of St Volodymyr's baptism.
"Patriarch Kirill of Moscow noted that the modern Russian people are the heirs of Prince Vladimir."
What are these heirs who do not know the name of their ancestor, and do not know that his name was Volodymyr, and not Vladimir?" asks the historian.
According to Paliy, the Moscow Patriarch is deceiving, saying that Kyivan Prince Volodymyr baptized Russians (who in 988 did not exist yet).
"It is interesting that the "first Great Russian", according to the Russian historian Volodymyr Klyuchevsky, appeared 150 years after the baptism.
At the time of St Volodymyr, the Baptism on the territory of Russia was known to take place only in Novgorod, but around 990. Also, the Russians cannot consider the people of Novgorod, their ancestors, because the Muscovites killed almost all Novgorod residents in the 15-16 centuries.
In fact, in 998 the Great Kyivan Prince Volodymyr baptized Kyiv and Rus, that is, the outskirts of Kyiv, within a radius of about 250 km. In other lands subject to Kyiv, paganism retreated gradually. In Novgorod, which was not considered Rus, pagan rebellions had to be suppressed by force, as well as in Suzdal, which was also not Rus, where pagan magi incited the people to revolt against Christianity even a century and a half (!) after the baptism of the Kyivans. Back in the 1130s, the pagan Vyatichi (Viatka people) executed the Kyivan preacher, St Kuksha Pechersky," Oleksandr Palii said.