In my opinion, the Russians and Ukrainians were essentially one people at a time in history. They were descended from the Vikings that made their way down and fractions moved north to Moscow due to the Mongolian invasions.
As that all may be, the fact of the matter is that Russia has the capacity to wipe every city in Ukraine off the map, and if they did, the West would do nothing about it because it isn't worth another world war this time with nuclear weapons.
Case in point, diplomacy should have prevailed before shots were fired.
