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Correct me if I’m wrong, but the original Kievan Russ community founded Moscow and then stationed there when the Mongols utterly destroyed Kyiv. They then re-colonized their old territory centuries later. From Wikipedia —
What happened to Kievan Russ is actually relevant to the topic. Kyiv decided to fight against the Mongols, which led to the total desolation of Kyiv and the destruction of the original Kievan Russ culture. Something similar happened to Baghdad. But the Slavs in Moscow decided to acquiesce to Mongol rule, which allowed for the salvation of Kievan Russ culture and the continuation of Russian Orthodoxy. So there are two important things to consider here: Moscow and Kievan Russ are historically the same culture / people, and history shows how delusional concepts of self-determination have destroyed Kyiv before — until, of course, Moscow liberated its former territories, because they chose to submit to the Mongol’s greater strength. (nota bene: being zero percent Slav, I don’t care about anything happening east of Poland, and having the Slavs destroy each other is as beneficial to the West as having the East Asians destroy each other or the Semites destroy each other. But I genuinely feel that there is something deeply wrong with the waste of life in the Russian-Ukraine war especially with Ukraine’s low TFR.)
Whether you're right or wrong is irrelevant.
What is rellevant is that Moscow thinks Kiev is Russian and Kiev disagreed stongly enough to go to war over the matter.
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You one part wrong: Moscow did not bend to the Mongols, it was destroyed. Vladimir (and others) bent. Vladimir had (vague) issues which led to people moving to Tver and Moscow, who then fought over Vladimir. But yes, the main part is right. Russia's national mythology's founded on bending to greater powers (like China, today.) For detail (since your main point is incoherent or evil to me):
The Kievan Rus was barely a single entity and disintegrated by 1100. Where the Holy Roman Empire for most of its existence was a very lose collection for a long period, the Kievan Rus was a section of the Rus (East Slavic lands, post facto held by Russia in the 19th century, but can also mean something like city state or East Slavic statelet). Somehow, this concept stretches far beyond Kiev's rule.
Novgorod's, Rostov's, Kiev's etc. territories are considered as one, because Yaroslav the Wise temporarily controlled them (but they didn't hold together afterwards.) Why consider Vladimir's efforts 100 years later part of Kiev, when at best, the connection by this point is Vladimir briefly conquering Kiev (after Ryazan) around 1150. None of these people wrote of themselves under the Kievan Rus or fighting for some past Kievan unity.
150-200 years after temporarily being together, Rostislav, Prince of Smolensk took Kiev (for 1 week). His son held Smolensk and Novgorod. His son took Kiev in 1215, then took Vladimir, losing Novgorod. In 2023, ~20 independent princes and Turkic tribes sent a host to fight the Mongols, half died. In 1237, Bantu Khan took Kiev. Other statelets like Novgorod and Smolensk were unaffected. The village of Moscow was destroyed at this time. A new Yaroslav asks the Mongols to become prince of Vladimir in 1238. When he dies, the Mongols give the eldest son Vladimir. The younger son, Alexander Nevsky is given (the ashes of) Kiev (not physically by their family). When the Khan died, they were to all go to Sarai and pledge allegiance, which Andrey didn't. The Mongol army returned, removed Andrey and gave Alexander Nevsky all of Vladimir's possessions. Alexander Nevsky then led a Mongol army back to Novgorod in 1259... His son, Daniel, born in 1261, founded a monastery and the first stone church in Moscow, ruling over Tver.
Records are sparse, but from 0 inhabitants in the 1240s, Moscow was able to wrest Vladimir from Tver in the 1300s, gaining the right to... Collect taxes for the Mongols. (You don't hear about Kiev again until the 1650s. The Western Eastern Slavs (ancestors of Belarusians and Ukrainians) had their own stories with/in/as Lithuania and Poland, using the Ruthenian literary language etc.) (Remember, the Polish national poem starts "Oh Lithuania, my native land..."!)
A far better connection between Kiev and Moscow forms from the 1660s, where Ukrainian statesmen, clerics and scholars move to Moscow and establish the structure of the Russian state, reform its church, found schools etc.
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