Years ago with no education on the subject I thought Ukrainians and Russians were substantially the same. The languages looked and sounded similar, and many of the traditional costumes and dances seemed the same. But well before Putin's diatribe about justifying Ukraine's lack of independence, I had been informed by Ukrainians of the very real distinction in language, culture, and to a great extent, religion. In fact, the Orthodox Christian world has been dividing between the Russian and Ukrainian primates in recent years.
The Russian invasion and brutality of tactics has greatly accelerated something that has been developing for generations.