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Putin did not invade Ukraine to take it over. It’s a very complex history unless you study it then you probably don’t understand it.

Read the following it came out two years ago and it is an excellent explanation on the Ukraine Ukraine war and what Russia is doing there
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/09/david-stockman/washingtons-pointless-war-in-behalf-of-a-fake-nation/

Do not assume that those who disagree with you have not studied history. Let's not pretend, Putin attacked Ukraine to seize some choice land and to subjugate the rest of Ukraine to Russian control. Putin has long made it known that he does not accept Ukrainian independence, that he views it as rightly a part of Russia. Don't gloss over this. This started when Putin attempted to block the EU/Ukraine economic agreement. It has since escalated. Under a weak Biden, he thought he do a quick grab with little opposition. Unfortunately for him, it has not worked out that way. The article that you reference only affirms this Russian nationalist view that Ukraine is not a real country. It does so, however, by misrepresenting history.

When the mailed fist of communist rule was removed, in fact, Ukraine became a territory yearning to be partitioned into more amenable jurisdictions of governance.

Rather, all of the oblast, including Crimea, voted for independence.

Prior to the end of WWI, there was no Ukrainian state. Like the artificial and unsustainable polities of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, which were confected by self-serving politicians at Versailles (especially the domestic vote seeking Woodrow Wilson), Ukraine was a product of geopolitical engineering—in this case by the new rulers of the Soviet Union.

False. Ukraine declared its independence from Russia in 1917. This independence was recognized by the Russian government. Desires for independence, however, preceded this and date back the 19th century. It was then conquered in 1921 by the Bolsheviks, but the Ukrainian national identity was so strong that Lenin had to create the fig leaf that Ukraine was state independent of Russia and formed, with Russia, the Soviet Union. The Soviet constitution recognized the right of Ukraine to leave the union. This is what Putin has called "Lenin's mistake."

What was to become Ukraine joined Russia in 1654 when Bohdan Khmelnitsky, a Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, petitioned Russian czar Alexey to accept the Zaporozhian Host into Russia.

Again, false. The Ukrainian Cossacks were seeking independence from Poland and turned to Moscow for protection, not to be annexed by Russia. The latter restrictions to the Hetmanate's independence were in violation of the 1654 Treaty of Pereiaslav which only called for protection of the Cossack state by the tsar. Ukraine was only officially annexed into Russia by Catherine the Great in 1781.

In 1919 Lenin created the socialist state of Ukraine on part of the territory of the former Russian Empire.

This glosses over the fact that the Ukrainians, as I have stated above, declared independence in 1917. Even the map included in the article you referenced shows the 1917 borders of Ukraine that exceed those of today.

In the end, it is the self-identity of the Ukrainians themselves that legitimizes its independence.

Putin did not invade Ukraine to take it over.

Yes, that explains Putin's 7,000 word essay on why Ukraine cannot exist as an independent country from Russia.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181