Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants Russia to change its name to 'Muscovy'
- Volodymyr Zelenskyy has supported a petition to change Russia's name to "Muscovy."
- The petition's creator wants to detach Russia linguistically from Kyivan Rus, the first East Slavic state.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has supported a petition to officially change Russia's name to "Muscovy."
The petition to Zelenskyy, created on November 23, has exceeded the 25,000 signatures that it originally asked for. It is a symbolic gesture with no power to compel any actual change.
The petition argues that this name change should be put into effect because "Russia" sounds like "Kyivan Rus," the Medieval precursor state that included territory in both modern-day Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia have a long-standing dispute over who the true successor of Kyivan Rus is, per Politico.
"Muscovy," meanwhile, is an old term referring to the area around Moscow, which grew as a center of power and influence, expanding into the Russian Empire, later the Soviet Union, then contracting in the 1990s to become the capital of the modern Russian Federation.
The petition's author, Valeriya Oleksandrivna Shakhvorostova, wrote: "For foreigners, the names "Rus" (as Kievan Rus was marked on maps) and "Russia", "Russie", "Russland" (as Russia was marked) look almost identical."
"This leads to confusion at the international level. Fiction books are being written, films are being shot where Russia is presented as Rus, which is unacceptable," Shakhvorostova added in the petition.
"We have a responsibility to reclaim our identity and our history," she said.
Zelenskyy replied to the petition on Friday, saying that careful consideration would have to be given to historical and cultural sensitivities, and "possible international legal consequences" would have to be taken into account.
"I appealed to the Prime Minister of Ukraine with a request for its comprehensive processing, in particular with the involvement of scientific institutions, and to inform me and the author of the petition about the results," Zelenskyy said in response to the petition.
Russian officials have lashed out at the petition's proposal to change Russia's name. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Telegram channel in March that this is more "evidence of the attempt to create 'anti-Russia' from Ukraine."
Although the petition may help make a point, countries are generally considered to be in charge of their own names and can't be compelled to change them.
The official way for a country to change its name is by announcing it at the UN, as when Turkey in 2022 asked to be called Türkiye.
Sometimes names are changed under duress, like when Greece pressured its neighbor to change its name from Macedonia to North Macedonia. Its government complied in 2019, hoping the switch would help its ambitions to join NATO and the EU, both moves that Greece can veto.
Representatives for the Ukrainian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.