Igor Sikorsky, who created the first multifunctional helicopter, was Ukrainian, born in Kyiv, and later emigrated to the United States.

Many sources, unfamiliar with history and its nuances and who are unaware of the distinction between Russians and Ukrainians or of Ukrainians’ long struggle for independence, refer to him as Russian, simply because Kyiv was part of the Russian Empire at the time. Due to this lack of knowledge, they would call a Buryat, a Ukrainian, or a Chechen “Russian” alike. And if the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe that was formed after World War II had not collapsed, they would probably be saying today that Poles, Bulgarians, Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, Albanians, and Ukrainians are also Russians. Never mind…

Igor Sikorsky’s company is still operating in the United States nearly 100 years later.