An early medieval hillfort near the village of Bychal in western Ukraine is providing a clearer picture of how communities in Kyivan Rus organised local defence over a thousand years ago ... Its position appears to have been carefully selected.
Icon detail of early Rus’ at the siege of Tsargrad ... By the early 10th century, the Rus’ had organized into a structured polity—the Kievan Rus’ (or Kyivan Rus’)—controlling the Dnieper trade routes from Novgorod and Kiev to the Black Sea.