According to the Historian Serhii Plokhy, "The word “Ukraine,” which today is used to define an independent country in the middle of Europe, has medieval origins and was first used by the Kyivan chroniclers of the twelfth century to define the areas of today’s Ukraine bordering on the Pontic steppes. In the second half of the seventeenth century the term “Ukraine” entered the international vocabulary as one of the names of the Cossack polity created in the course of the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648– | According to the Historian Serhii Plokhy, "The word “Ukraine,” which today is used to define an independent country in the middle of Europe, has medieval origins and was first used by the Kyivan chroniclers of the twelfth century to define the areas of today’s Ukraine bordering on the Pontic steppes. In the second half of the seventeenth century the term “Ukraine” entered the international vocabulary as one of the names of the Cossack polity created in the course of the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648– |