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The best explanation I've seen is that Putin wants Ukraine to be like Bavaria. They are free to yodel and walk around in leather pants and speak their unintelligible dialect among themselves, but they are still an integral part of the German nation and the German state. While Ukrainians want to be like the Netherlands. Who mention the German blood of their ruler in the anthem, used to be in the HRE, but are free to polder and walk around in wooden clogs and speak their unintelligible dialect among themselves in their own country.
Austria might even be closer to Germany than the Netherlands.
I am the first to admit that borders are accidents of history. There is no good principled reason why Austria should be its own thing but Bavaria should be part of Germany. The status quo is sacred merely as a Schelling point. If people want to move borders through democratic means, such as the Scottish movement to leave the UK, that is fine. But after two big industrialized wars, the world has largely realized that moving borders through military action is not worth the effort any more. Eventually, such actions became seen as defection from the club of civilized countries.
For Europe, "stick to the borders however stupid and unfair they are" has been a marked improvement over the ancient, previous method of resolving land disputes, "bash your neighbors heads in every 50 years to see who gets to own the disputed territories".
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