The Ukrainian language is descended from the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus'. Linguists proved that the Ukrainian with the Belarusian most like the old Slavonic. And these languages are not dialects, while in Russia there are quite a lot chauvinists who deny the existence of the Ukrainian history, Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian language. Such opinions trace its origins to the Russian Empire when there were strong advocacy and policy on the eradication of any symbols of the Ukrainian nation. Since Ukrainian and Russian is both my native languages, I can say that they are similar, but not really. With knowledge of Russian, you can just about grasp the sense of the Bulgarian speech. Knowing Ukrainian, you can understand Belarusian. But with knowledge of Russian, you don't understand Ukrainian (tested). And with knowledge of Ukrainian, you don't understand Russian.