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At this specific level, there simply isn't that much difference between the two countries. "Until Putin took over" the trajectories of them were quite similar.
Well, yes and no. You need to look at it in dynamics, not at one moment, but over the time. In early 90s, yes, things were pretty similar, except more money in Russia, but Ukraine had its share too. Then the paths diverged. Russia essentially rejected the "Western" way - in part because people implementing it were also grotesquely corrupt, though Putin's gang (which weren't strictly speaking his yet, just the one he belonged to) were about as corrupt, but not obviously so. There were also other factors, including the Chechen war, terrorism, etc. - and, of course, the conscious choice by Putin to set up Russia in opposition to the West.
Ukraine, while being close beside in corruption, has had also strong independence/nationalist vibes - which at times had been anti-Russian but not necessarily so. There had been a lot of fractions, and most of them were for at least keeping decent relations with Russia, while staying independent. Ukraine leaned towards integrating with Europe (remember, the explosive wokification by that time hadn't happen yet and "Europe" didn't mean "import Syrians, introduce censorship and trans your kids" yet). That said, for a while they hadn't been that far apart - in fact, at one time the most popular politician, among all alive, in Ukraine had been none other but Vladimir Putin. Putin overplayed his hand though, and helped to install Yanukovich, who had proven too much even for Ukrainians that were used to corruption.
And when it went sour, instead of taking a step back and trying to play the same long game he played before - after all, there were a lot of corrupt politicians in Ukraine, and Putin probably could choose another one to puppet and keep manipulating Ukraine while seemingly staying out of the fray openly - he decided to put the boot down. In Russia, putting the boot down worked spectacularly well - billions of dollars invested in Russian opposition led to it having absolutely zero power very soon and Putin eliminating any trace of dissent. Not only that, but the "moral power" that the dissidents held in the USSR, is mostly gone too - except for rare personalities like Nemtsov or Navalny, who Putin just openly murdered with nobody being able to object, there's not ever any influential opposition figures. In Ukraine, however, it did not work at all. That's about where the trajectories, previously following if not the same then adjacent paths, split drastically. Putin chose to build his new Russian Empire, Ukraine preferred to stay out of it.
So yes, the genesis is common, and a lot of common themes, but there are very important differences.
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