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they are about the same ethnicity with only religion dividing them right? Yes and no. Both Russians and Ukrainians consider themselves to be East Slavs. However over the centuries they have mixed with other groups. Russians have various amounts of Finnish and Tatar blood. Ukrainians have mixed with various Steppe people in ancient times, Turks and Poles in more modern days.

About 65% of Ukraine belongs to the Eastern Orthodox Church, the same as Russia. The Western third of Ukraine is primarily Uniate Catholic. The owe allegiance to Rome, while keeping a lot of the Orthodox liturgy.

Russian and Ukrainian languages are similar. Both use the cyrillic alphabet. In the East its heavily mixed with Russian, in the west with Polish borrowings.

Well OK I knew all that although Ukrainians would never admit to Turkish blood because there isn't any. Sure they have been raided for hundreds of years but most the raids took kidnapped women back to Ottoman lands.

So it appears that the main stumbling block is religion..the Catholic and Eastern rites cementing the divisions.

"About 65% of Ukraine belongs to the Eastern Orthodox Church, the same as Russia. The Western third of Ukraine is primarily Uniate Catholic. The owe allegiance to Rome, while keeping a lot of the Orthodox liturgy."

This is fairly accurate but, to put a finer point on it, the Orthodox Church is divided into 3 main sub-groups, each loyal to a different Patriarch, and a host of smaller ones.
Interestingly and for obvious reasons, other than within the grouping loyal to the Patriarch of Moscow, there seems to be a fair bit of support for the reformers within the Orthodox community.

Although smaller than the Orthodox in overall numbers, the Ukrainian Catholic Church is larger than any of its sects. Over the past millennium, few Christian Churches have suffered the persecution that was inflicted upon Ukrainian Catholics by the communists; largely because of the nationalist component of their Faith and their allegiance to Rome which was seen as both anti soviet and anti Slavic.

The Russian Orthodox Church, in particular, enjoyed a sweetheart deal with the communists and was often the beneficiary of stolen Catholic Churches and artifacts as well as converts compelled to so at gunpoint.
There's a lot of both history and theology driving the reformers and a big time "chickens coming home to roost" factor at hand for the Russians and their Ukrainian toadies.