Please explain what you mean by “meaningless gesture.”
Maybe you mean that Stalin wanted to put enough Russians into Ukraine to facilitate the gradual Russification of Ukraine SSR. This is what most historians think.
But, this wasn’t meaningless. Stalin is responsible for the trouble Ukraine has been having almost since the collapse of the Soviet Union, because a large minority of its population is oriented to Russia.
During the parliamentary Ukrainian election of 2019, two the breakaway provinces and Crimea did not vote. And, the pro-Russia party only got 13 percent. The prime minister’s party won an outright majority, and altogether the pro-western parties won an overwhelming majority. It was “addition by subtraction.”
Well Stalin assumed the Soviet Union would last forever. The various SSRs had very little power, they were ruled directly from Moscow.