Genocidal conquest is a feature, not a bug, of Russian empire building. Of course, Russia is far from unique in this.

For Russians, Ukrainians are Malinki Russkiy kholki and muzhiki. They medicalize Ukrainian identity as a mental disease, just as the Nazis medicalized the racial inferiority their ideology ascribed to Jews, Slavs, Blacks and Gypsies. They perceive Ukrainian identity as identity theft because it nullifies Russia's foundation mythology about the conversion of the Viking warlord Voldemar (Vladimir) in 988 and Russia Orthodoxy as the Third Rome instead of the Slavo-Turkic hybrid empire it really is. To avoid looking in history's mirror and seeing what's really there, Russia must succeed in branding Ukrainian identity as produced by a conspiracy of the satanist West, globalist foreigners, NATO, Jews, Poles, gays, trans....add more at will.