Russian history is a chain of victories over allegedly stronger enemies: Mongols, Teutonics, Poles and Lithuanians, Swedes, Turks, French, Germans etc. Nobody gave us freedom, we took it ourselves by rekting our enemies. Now look at Ukrainians: their history is a chain of occupation and bootlicking. They never fought for their freedom, someone (we) always liberated them from foreign occupants, be it Poles or Crimean tatars. It was a Russian tsar who bought Kiev and took it from Poles.