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The East Slavs are the most populous subgroup of the Slavs. They speak the East Slavic languages, and formed the majority of the population of the medieval state Kievan Rus', which they claim as their cultural ancestor. Today Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians are the existent East Slavic nations.
…south into the Balkans, the East Slavs occupied the forest and forest-steppe regions of what are now western and north-central Ukraine and southern Belarus; they expanded farther north and to the northeast into territories of the future Russian state centred on Moscow.
The East Slavs trace their national origins to the tribal unions of Kievan Rus' and Rus' Khaganate, beginning in the 10th century. They came particularly under the influence of the Byzantine Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church .
Slav, member of the most numerous ethnic and linguistic body of peoples in Europe, residing chiefly in eastern and southeastern Europe but extending also across northern Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Customarily, Slavs are subdivided into East Slavs, West Slavs, and South Slavs.
The East Slavs comprise three closely related peoples, who between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries emerged as distinguishable linguistic-cultural groups: the Great Russians (usually called Russians), the Ukrainians (in earlier times often called Little Russians), and the Belorussians (Byelorussians, Bielorussians, White Russians).
The East Slavs are the most populous subgroup of the Slavs. They speak the East Slavic languages, and formed the majority of the population of the medieval state Kievan Rus', which they claim as their cultural ancestor. Today Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians are the existent East Slavic nations. [citation needed]
The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siberia and the Russian Far East.
