Ukraine is not “western” puppet, it’s just a big oligarch-dominated part of the ex-USSR.

Say, Transcaucasia was toxic nationalist-bandit-oligarch dominated, with these components being initially almost equally mixed, and to some extent still is.

Russia was oligarch and FSB dominated, until those merged with FSB being on top.

Ukraine was similar, but oligarchs are on top now.

I wholeheartedly agree that Ukraine is better than Russia. It’s just more similar to Russia in the dimension of evil than most here seem to think.