High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Rus` khaganate (also "khaganate of Rus" and variants) is a historiographical term (translating Russian: русский каганат) for the formative phase of the Rus state in the 9th century AD. The Rus state would come to flourish as the "Kievan Rus`" during the 10th to 11th centuries, and then fragmented into a number of successor polities during the 12th to 15th centuries.