In other words, I was right. As soon as Stalin was out of the way, Ukrainian and pro Ukrainian leaders undid the damage Stalin inflicted, and the Russian SSR wasn’t the boss of the Ukrainian SSR; the USSR was the boss of both. As the USSR weakened, the friendship between the SSRs improved.
Putin doesn’t like that direction of travel. He preferred the Stalin approach. He only references the thawing of relations between the Republics of Ukraine and Russia (within the USSR) as an excuse to revive the Stalin era attitude towards Ukraine.
As I’ll remind the Putinists here of their own mantra: the Russian Federation is not ACTUALLY the spiritual successor to Stalin’s USSR; it’s the successor to the RFSSR that, like the Ukrainian SSR, got accepted into the UN as an independent state.
They’re correct to say that. Nevertheless, that correction is it’s a 2 way street. Russia only inherited the Soviet Union legacy because the other ex SSRs didn’t lobby to have that legacy split up. Russia didn’t earn that inheritance, and it didn’t deserve that inheritance. Russia wanted to be the de facto successor of the USSR, despite knowing that there were toxic elements to that legacy.
If Putin doesn’t like his New Patriotic War is being compared to Stalin era brutality and the expansion of the USSR at gunpoint, he should maybe act a bit more like Brezhnev and a lot less like Stalin... And maybe explain to all those Russian people waving the hammer and sickle flags that actually Putin’s Russia is not “the USSR reborn”.
I owe Russia and Ukraine not a thing and they need to settle this foolishness on their own.