Pan-Slavism, under big brother Russia's tutelage of course, has been a staple of Russian propaganda for a two centuries. It's like the Nazi's "Pan-Aryanism" that wanted to group together the Scandinavians, Dutch and English under one "Pan-Germanic" grouping under German tutelage.
Most of Ukraine west of the Dnipro spent almost 400 years being acculturated to the West by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. That's why Ukrainians, even many of the Russian speakers who have been influenced by that culture, are not Russian barbarians.
If Ukraine gets more air defense, Russia's air campaign will have limited ability to suppress much of anything. Even now, apart from glide bombs on the front lines, most of Russia's attacks on civilian infrastructure and apartments seem designed either to coerce a peace settlement or force Ukrainians out of areas the Russians wish to annex, like Kharkov. Those attacks have not had much military effect in the past and I doubt they will in the future either. In fact, they just tend to piss off the population even more.
I've read about supposed great Russian offensives for two years now. They've never materialized.
Yes, the offensive never materialized because there was no intent for an offensive. It’s just propagandist fear tactics, saying Russia wants to invade Europe. People don’t realize you have to build an army to do that, which the Russians had not done because they never did want an offensive. They are revving things up and putting the country on a military foothold now because of a planned offensive in Ukraine. There is a lot of hype and fear that is used by propagandists, or people and “experts” just get thing totally wrong.
Yes, the Slavs have been fighting each other for centuries, and this conflict is no different. Read Taras Bullba or watch the movie (not a great one) and you’ll see.
You are right in that Russia never saw its own culture in a positive light. They, too, admired the West and would import French, as a language of sophistication, to be spoken in the Russian Courts. It is sad. I also believe Putin wanted to get along with the west and have some kind of rapprochement. If you hear his interview with Tucker Carlson, he was thwarted a number of times by Bush and Clinton. Now I think he is very cynical and disillusioned by the West. I think the West thought it could carve up Russia (an excuse for a gas station?) as it has done with Ukraine. Putin didn’t see that the West actually wanted the war (Boris Johnson squashing the peace talks in Istanbul). Boris Johnson was there as a messenger to the Ukrainians to let the war go forward. So that and the push of NATO in Eastern Europe seems to have disillusioned Putin.