Rusyns

Rusyns, Carpatho-Rusyns or Ruthenes (Rusyn: Русины Rusyns; also sometimes referred to as Carpatho-Russians or Rusnaks) are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century. The use of the term Rusyn was prohibited by some governments, as seen after 1945 in Soviet Transcarpathia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

Today, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Croatia officially recognize contemporary Rusyns (or Ruthenes) as an ethnic minority. In 2007, Carpatho-Rusyns were recognized as a separate ethnicity in Ukraine by the Zakarpattia Regional Council. Rusyns within Ukraine have Ukrainian citizenship, yet the claim of the Ukrainian government that they have assumed the Ukrainian ethnic identity is unfounded.. Most contemporary self-identified ethnic Rusyns live outside of Ukraine.

Of the estimated 1.2 million people of Rusyn origin, only 55,000 have officially identified themselves politically or ethnically as such, according to contemporary censuses, due to among other reasons, the Ukrainian Government's refusal to list Rusyn as an ethnic identity on any census forms. The ethnic classification of Rusyns as a separate East Slavic ethnicity distinct from Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians is, however, politically controversial. The majority of Ukrainian scholars consider Rusyns to be an ethnic subgroup of the Ukrainian people. This is disputed by some Lemko scholars.

The terms "Rusyn", "Ruthenes", "Rusniak", "Lemak", "Lyshak" and "Lemko" are considered by some scholars to be historic, local and synonymical names for Carpathian Ukrainians. Others hold that the terms "Lemko" and "Rusnak" are simply regional variations of "Rusyn" or "Ruthene".