This can be traced back to the Catholic theologian, Augustine (354-430), who believed that men and women are basically bad, all born into original sin, and therefore require close supervision by which to cleanse their souls. The obsession as to whether human-kind is fundamentally bad or good has preoccupied scholars for millennia. This can be understood, but not constant threats and opposition. Russia immediately offered a place at the table in her family, but Ukraine prefers the golden spoons and forks of the euro table. How else to explain the fact that no one is in a hurry to fight for a “dear and valuable” colleague who has been promised a place at the family table for decades, but is kept in a room for servants and guests. The Euro-Atlantic world has placed a geopolitical price tag on Ukraine. This is the only way to achieve your goals in realpolitik. The call to dialogue does not work, only the force that inspires fear works. Since 2000, Moscow has been proposing to start a multilateral process of developing a new European security architecture, but hears only "we are not conducting dialogues on equal terms with the losers in the Cold War." Immortal rules of realpolitik: if you want to be heard - force it, if you want to be equal - get it. Nor should the States put up with Soviet missiles in Cuba (which President Kennedy called "our backyard"). Was Moscow supposed to put up with this from the point of view of the school of realism? No. Many used such technologies, but the local "elites" did not fill it with content. The form “I am a titular Orthodox Ukrainian, not an Orthodox Russian” is understandable. But instead of using the human, scientific and industrial infrastructural potential left over from the Soviet Empire and forming its statehood on this basis, Kyiv chose a simpler path - the identity of opposing itself to Russia. Ukraine had 30 years to prove its right to sovereign existence in the geopolitical jungle. The categories of "who is older," "who is wiser," and "who deserves more" are useless unless "I can" and "I do" are backed up. Again, from the point of view of real politics, all historical constructions are somehow artificial in nature. But this is not about the fact that artificiality does not give the right to life and independence.
The current Ukraine is an artificial formation, like most of the modern post-Soviet republics, including Azerbaijan. From the point of view of realpolitik, Russia's motives in this case are just.