Ascold and Dira's assassination is a chronicle event of the year 882 in Kiev , after which the Prince of Novgorod Oleg seized power in the city.
This date is traditional, but it is conditional, since the chronicle legend of how Oleg captured Kiev, was recorded one and a half to two centuries after the event. The story seems contradictory and is naive and has this plot: Oleg and little Igor, at the head of a great army, left Novgorod , walked around Kiev unnoticed and approached the Ugorsky natural boundary. Then Oleg hid the soldiers in the rooks and, posing as a merchant, asked Askold and Dir to meet. When Kiev princes without protection descended to the Dnieper , they were attacked by warriors who jumped out of hiding. Before giving the order to kill the princes, Oleg "proved" to Askold and Dir their rights to the throne, saying to them:
- “Both of you are not princes, not a prince's family. And I am the kind of prince. - And then they made Igor. - And this is the son of Rurik "
After that, without resistance from the Kievans, Oleg sat down in Kiev, proclaiming him “the mother of Russian cities” (the chronicler called the mouth of Prince Kiev “mother” and not “father”, since the “mother of cities” is a literal translation of the Greek word “metropolis”, i.e. " capital ").
Behind the chronicle story is the real case - the violent transfer of power in Kiev to a new dynasty - Rurikovich . As for the specific "naive" data, from some sources similar cases of capture by the Vikings of cities in Western Europe are known.