Grand Princes of Kiev

Grand Prince of Kiev (sometimes Grand Duke of Kiev) was the title of the Kievan prince and the ruler of Kievan Rus' from the 10th to 13th centuries. In the 13th century, Kiev became an appanage principality first of the Grand Prince of Volodymyr and the Golden Horde governors, and later was taken over by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

According to some Ukrainian historians (i.e., Kanyhin, Tkachuk), Ptolemy's mention of Metropolis, a Sarmatian town on the Dnieper River, shows the ancient existence of Kiev. The name Dnieper is derived from Sarmatian (Iranian) Dānu apara "the river far away."

Mythological rulers
According to Slavophiles, Kyi ruled since 430, one of the dates attributed to the legendary founding of Kiev in 482, although that date relates to Kovin on the Danube in Serbia. Some historians speculate that Kyi was a Slavic prince of eastern Polans in the 6th century. Kyi's legacy along with Shchek's is mentioned in the Book of Veles, the authenticity of which, however, is disputed.

Oleg, an apocryphal Kiev voivode, probably of Danish or Swedish origin, under the overlordship of the Khazar Khaganate.

Bravlin was a Varangian prince or chieftain, who led a Rus' military expedition to devastate the Crimea, from Kerch to Sugdaea, in the last years of the 8th century.

According to some Russian historians (i.e., Gleb S. Lebedev), Dir was a chacanus of Rhos (Rus' Khaganate|Rus' khagan). Thomas Noonan asserts that one of the Rus' "sea-kings", the "High king", adopted the title khagan in the early 9th century. Peter Benjamin Golden maintained that the Rus' became a part of the Khazar federation, and that their ruler was officially accepted as a vassal kagan of the Khazar Khaqan of Itil.

Some western historians (i.e., Kevin Alan Brook) suppose that Kiev was founded by Khazars or Magyars. Kiev is a Turkic place name (Küi = riverbank + ev = settlement). At least during the 8th and 9th centuries Kiev functioned as an outpost of the Khazar empire (a hill-fortress, called Sambat, "high place" in Old Turkic). According to Omeljan Pritsak, Constantine Zuckerman and other scholars, Khazars lost Kiev at the beginning of the 10th century.

Rurik Dynasty
The Rurikids were descendants of Rurik (Rørikr), a Varangian pagan chieftain.

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Princes of Kiev (Mongol invasion)
Due to Mongol invasion in 1240 Michael of Chernigov left Kiev to seek military assistance from the Kingdom of Hungary (Béla IV). During that time Prince of Smolensk Rostislav occupied Kiev, but was captured the same year by Daniel of Galicia who placed his voivode Dmytro to guard Kiev while the Grand Prince was away. Being unsuccessful in Hungary, Michael visited Konrad I in Masovia. Receiving no results in Poland, he eventually asked Daniel of Galicia for a sanctuary due to the invasion of Mongols.

Olshanski dynasty
Since the 14th century the principality of Kiev started to fall under the influence of Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1299 Metropolitan of Kiev Maximus moved his metropolitan see from Kiev to Vladimir-on-Klyazma. In 1321, after the Battle on the Irpin River, Gediminas installed one of his subjects Mindovg Olshansky from the Olshansky Family, a descendant of exiled to the Byzantine Empire family of Vseslav of Polotsk.

Rurik dynasty
In 1331 Kiev once again was taken by members of Rurik dynasty (Olgovich branch), the prince of Putivl.

After the Battle of Blue Waters (1362), Kiev and surrounding areas were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania.