Should Russians ethnicly be considered in their own slavic group like North slavs?

Should Russians be considered in their own slavic group like Northern slavs? Instead being counted as eastern slavs?? Russians and ukrainians are quite different genetically. While the other slavic groups like west and south slavs are pretty much the same, of course here and there is some halo group more russians have a lot of halogroup N while belarus and ukraine havent which is quite significant.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GOlxR_kKfX...+of+Europe.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...es_Tree_en.png

You also can see that linguistically their language is also very different. East slavic languages immediately brought up to ukrainian and northern russian before any russian language was finally made. It was only until south russian and northern russian united instead that the east slavic language brought into russian and ukrainian to begin with.

The Slavic groups are defined by language, not by genetics and culture.

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Originally Posted by Medvjed

The Slavic groups are defined by language, not by genetics and culture.

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but the groups are also considered as an ethnic people as well as a language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Slavs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Slavic_languages

I think the division of the Slavs to east, west and south is only possible by language.
while on the genetics and anthropology Slavs can be divided into northern and southern

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Originally Posted by sevruk

I think the division of the Slavs to east, west and south is only possible by language.
while on the genetics and anthropology Slavs can be divided into northern and southern

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yeah but you can see how different russians, western- and eastern slavs are, genetically.

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Originally Posted by RussiaPrussia

yeah but you can see how different russians, western- and eastern slavs are, genetically.

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Russians are genetically no different from Western Slavs, especially Poles.

The only notable genetic difference is for northern Russians that live above upper reaches of Volga River possibly excluding St Petersburg itself due people arriving in the city from different regions; this part of Russia does not account for the majority of the Russian population. Central European Russia overlaps with Belarus and Poland, while southern Russians overlap with Ukranians. As Sevruk stated the division between all Slavs is possible as southern and northern. Linguistically, it’s east, west and south.

PS According to my sources, the map is inaccurate for Belarus or data used to construct the map is dated.

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Originally Posted by Rugevit

The only notable genetic difference is for northern Russians that live above upper reaches of Volga River possibly excluding St Petersburg itself due people arriving in the city from different regions; this part of Russia does not account for the majority of the Russian population. Central European Russia overlaps with Belarus and Poland, while southern Russians overlap with Ukranians. As Sevruk stated the division between all Slavs is possible as southern and northern. Linguistically, it’s east, west and south.

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Only southern Russians have lighter pigmentation and below head index - than many Ukrainians or southwest Belarusians .

Balkanoid galicians aside, genetic differences between Eastern Slavs are minimal and the Poles are very close too. So racially only North/South is sensible.

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Originally Posted by Lisa

Only southern Russians have lighter pigmentation and below head index - than many Ukrainians or southwest Belarusians .

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Many people in Stavropol and Rostov-na-Donu regions have an admix of southerners. These people are considering themselves Russians. Moreover, people from Kuban' are close to Ukrainians. So are people from Kursk, Belgorod to eastern Ukrainians.
Poleshyuks and Pinchyuks of south-western Belarus similar to Ukrainians anthropologically and linguistically.

There are variations from region to region. South-North with a transition zone is a sensible choice.