I recently took a class on Russian literature and during the brief synopsis of Russian history my professor mentioned that Russian culture started or it least is rooted in the Kievan Rus. Obviously Kiev is now the capital of Ukraine and considering the political situation in the region I'm worried that it would be hard to find an unbiased explanation of how the Kievan Rus relates to Ukraine and Russia. Is Kiev the birthplace of Russia? If so, what does that mean for its role in Ukrainian history? I realize what we now call Russia and Ukraine didn't exist back then so if both countries are product of Kiev when did they split apart?
Edit: I just want to be clear I don't have some political/nationalistic reason for posting this, I'm just curious. I'm not from the region so I don't have a bias with regards to the history of these countries. I never really visit this subreddit but I have only heard good things about it so I'm sure I can get an answer that doesn't sound like some sort of nationalistic historical revisionism.
I realize what we now call Russia and Ukraine didn't exist back then so if both countries are product of Kiev when did they split apart?
They didn't split apart. There was several earldoms under the Kievan Rus rule and after a while they began their own fight for power and seceded.
About 13th century part of the former Kievan Rus was consumed by Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and part was consumed by Mongol Horde. After a while Mongol Horde got busy with their own internal struggle for power so their occupied parts of Rus gain relative indepence and Muscovy earldom started to consume their neighbours, while rest of the Kievan Rus was divided between Poland and Lithuania.
So after a while, when Muscovy earldom was free from most of the tributes and Mongol ruling and other Kievan Rus parts were not a separate subjects, Muscovites declared themselves rulers of all Rus and successors of the Roman Empire. Both declarations were, let's say, very debatable. But since in following centuries most of the historical documents in Russia were heavily redacted to support at least first claim, right now most of the Russian and Ukrainian population didn't question this fact and a lot of historians struggled over that.
tl;dr : Kiev wasn't birthplace of Russia; Russia has only a little relation to Kievan Rus.
I did a fairly decent summary of a closely related topic here just a few days ago. It answers some of your questions.