During a meeting with Vladimir Putin on July 18, the governor of Russia’s Vladimir region, Alexander Avdeev, cited the 1169 sack of Kyiv as an example of “uniting Russian principalities” — praising the destruction of the Ukrainian capital by Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky.
Avdeev recalled that Bogolyubsky led a coalition of 11 principalities — including Chernihiv, Smolensk, Tver, Suzdal, and Rostov — to storm and burn Kyiv because, in his words, the city “was sowing discord among Russian lands and families.”
“This was the first such unification of fragmented principalities,” Avdeev said, according to the official Kremlin website, which published a transcript of the meeting.
The remarks, presented as a historical anecdote, come amid Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and have sparked outrage online for glorifying the destruction of Kyiv.