text: Some historians, based on late and unreliable sources, try to declare Askold and Dir to be direct heirs of the legendary Kyi, a representative of the dynasty of "Kievichi". The existence of this "princely dynasty" is based on the information of the Polish historian of the 15th century Jan Dlugosz, who wrote that the chronicle's Kievan princes Askold and Dir, killed by Igor (according to the Primary Chronicle killed by Oleg), were descendants of Kyi. This message of Dlugosz was used in the works of Dmitry Ilovaysky (who treated the facts quite arbitrarily) and Mykhailo Hrushevsky (who strove to prove the existence of a distinct Ukrainian ethnos already in the 4th century); Aleksey Shakhmatov also referred to them in his historical reconstructions. However, this point of view is rarely supported by specialists.
  The mention by Jan Dlugosz of the family ties of Askold and Dir with the legendary Kyi raises serious doubts. According to Vladimir Petrukhin: "Jan Dlugosz was not so naive as some modern authors who uncritically accepted his conclusions. The fact is that the Polish chronicler sought to substantiate the claims of the Polish state on Kiev and therefore associated the Kiev Polans with Polish Polans, considered Kyi a "Polish pagan prince", etc." Therefore, we have no grounds to believe that Askold and Dir belonged to the "dynasty of Kievichi" (or even were Slavs).
  Primary Chronicle and Novgorod First Chronicle