What's totally unimportant. Germans never call themselve "Germans" for example but we are Germans.
Really? And what if, one fine morning, the inhabitants of Waterkante, following Fritz Reuter, decide to form a new Low German nation and found an independent state? Won't you call them freaks and clowns?
Why? You - the Russians and the Ukrainians - had been called from us "Ruthenen" about 200 years ago. But Kiev was not called Moscow nor had been Moscow called Kiev. It's totally clear that no one in Moscow has any right to define what the people in Kiev and in the whole Ukraine have to be or to think or not to be and not to think.
As well as Berlin is not Hamburg.
More likely " Whites", "Blondes" (as in words Rusiy, Rusalka). But it doesn't explain vowel "O" in the middle of the word, or unpronounceable "i" in the end, so it's not popular among linguists.
The Kiev Rus had once been a commercial settlement of the Vikings. But "Slavs" = "slaves" are the people who had been sold as slaves from the Vikings in East-Rome (Constantinople).
No. "Slav" means "glory" or "word". "Slavyane" - simply those who speak "words", in difference with "Nemtsy" (speechless, mute, Germans).
Interesting that you got your name from the Finns. As far as I can see it meant in the origin just simple "rowers",
Most of Russians have Finnish roots.
But "Vikings" was often only a way to live - like "Pirates" for example. Not only Scandinavians had been Vikings as far as I know. And the Swedes speak a Germanic language and not a Slawic language.
Yes, of course. But Vikings were multicultural group. As well as Ukrainians - "Borderlanders", or Poles - "Fielders", it was not about blood or language. It was about the way of life.
We have done business "since ever" with the people who lived in the region of Kiev.
Hmm ... A text from Hinkmar the arcbishop of Reims. He had to do with the founding of the Holy Roman Empire after Charlesmagne.
That's a long time now. As far as I know the Slaws had been 100 or 200 years old in those days. You had been babies at this time of history as the US-Americans are today small children.
Actually, Slavic-Baltic languages are a way more archaic than German ones, and a way more close to Proto-Indo-European. That's why some Ukrainians pretend to call the language of Yamnaya culture - "Ancient Ukrainian", and pretend to be "roots" of all Indo-European cultures (including Indian, Iranian, Celtic, German, Roman and many others).
The Anglo-Saxons are the founders of England and so also of the founders of the USA. If the USA would do war against GB then they would do war against their own roots. What happens when to do war against the own roots you can see very well in the Brits themselves. They did do war against their own root Germany and they wan this war in two warm ups - Stalin had helped them - but in the end they lost much more than they ever had been able to win by doing so. Nazis, Commies and Islamists had been a result of world 1+2.
All people are brothers (except those, who are sisters, of course). And any war is a fratricidal war.