[drran]

> This could be true.

It's written history. If you know Russian, just read chronicles.

> This is an ideologically-motivated delusion, more or less on the level of the Indians who are willing to claim that the Aryans were indigenous to the subcontinent while ignoring the linguistic and genetic evidence. Russia refers to the Rus in the same way that France refers to the Franks and Serbia refers to the Serbs.

Ideologically motivated delusion for Russian Empire was to be descendants of Rome Empire via Byzantine and Russia (Ukraine). No Emperor of the time wanted to draw their line from a bunch of bastards of unknown origin, which did raids on neighborhoods. The town of Russia moved up of the Russia (now Porussia) river, but it is still present on the map.

Russia is not a Slavic word, so you cannot draw such parallels. When Russians captured Kyїv (Oleg of Novgorod killed Ascold and Dir, Slavic rulers of Kyїv, in 882), Russians declared Kyїv as mother for Russian cities, but Russian were assimilated by Slavs, so they forgot their native language and started to use Slavic language, so, with time, name of their country was changed according to rules of Slavic language.