[lubonay]

That's a tricky question.

You could say Ukraine has Russian roots in that it split off of the Russian Empire and then the USSR. You could also say Russia has Ukrainian roots because that was the historic domain of the Kievan Rus.

Similarly, you could say Bulgaria has Russian roots because it gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century in the wake of the Russo-Turkish war. Alternatively, you can say Russia has Bulgarian roots in that Cyrillic was invented in Bulgaria in the 9th century and spread to other Slavic cultures.

The bottom line is that Eastern Europe and Russia have, for better or for worse, strong historic and cultural ties.