Exactly. The Ukraine situation would be tantamount to Canada or Mexico entering into a military alliance with Iran -- not acceptable and a direct cause of war.
How is it any different to Finland joining NATO? (which they just did).
(also true for border regions with finnland, but way less overall as finnish is a different language family)
Russian nationalism consideres Kiev the root of the russian culture (but they might change that narrative soon).
Also, they are really not happy about it.
I don't think a language matters with a war with NATO.
> Also, they are really not happy about it.
Yet there is no war, shows you that NATO really works as a deterrence to Russia and that it had nothing to do with Ukraine being close to Russia and in NATO.
It's not about pragmatism, it's a sort of nationalistic fervor!
I think they are just inherently unhappy and miserable because they are Russians living in Russia.
Also the only two things Russia has going for it are their energy resources and their nukes. It's a poor second tier/regional power without that (even with the oil/gas/etc. it still has a 2.5x lower GDP than Germany despite an almost 2x higher population).