Answer based on context:

The use of the term Rus/Russia in the lands of ancient Rus' survived longer as a name used by Ukrainians for Ukraine. When the Austrian monarchy made vassal state Galicia-Lodomeria a province in 1772, Habsburg officials realized that the local East Slavic people were distinct from both Poles and Russians, and still called themselves Rus, until the empire fell apart in 1918. By 1840 the inferior term, Malaya Rus' , i.e. "Little Rus'", or Rus' Minora, for Ukrainians became derogative in the Russian Empire, and they began calling themselves Ukrainians, for Ukrayina. In the 1880s and 1900s, the popularity of the ethnonym Ukrainian spread and the term Ukraine became a substitute for Malaya Rus' among the Ukrainian population of the Empire. In the course of time the term Rus′ became restricted to western parts of present Ukraine , an area where Ukrainian nationalism, ardently supported by Austro-Hungarian authorities, competed with Galician Russophilia. By the early 20th century, the term Ukraine had predominantly replaced Malorussia in those lands and by the mid-1920s also in the Ukrainian diaspora in North America. Rusin  has been one of official self-identifications of the Rus' population in Poland . Until 1939, for many traditional Ruthenians and Poles, the word Ukrainiec  meant a person involved in or friendly to a nationalist movement.

What term was used before Ukraine to refer to the region?
Malorussia