RUSSIA INSIDER – The German occupation forces were the first to recognize a short-lived independent Ukraine in January 1918, during the time of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917−1921. Re-occupied by the Red Army, the eastern and southern parts of present-day Greater Ukraine joined the USSR in 1922 as a separate Soviet Socialist Republic (without Crimea).
According to the 1926 Soviet census of Crimea, the majority of the population were Russians (382.645). The second largest ethnic group were the Tartars (179.094). So Lenin should be considered the real father of Ukrainian statehood and also and its contemporary status as a nation.