Jesus Christ. What fucking bond? My fiancée is Ukrainian. They fucking hate Russians. Not just now but always. They tried fucking with Ukraine for forever, even before there was Ukraine as it is now.
There are brotherly ties, relatives, but it's not a healthy family, russians always thought they are the only ones that matter, the rest is deviation.
Now it's so much more clear, ukrainians who were russian speaking and mildly russian friendly now hate russia more than anyone, being bombarded does that, they feel betrayed.
I knew a Ukrainian in ~2016 who was SUPER into Russia. He and his family all spoke Russian more frequently than anything else and would talk about Russia all the time. I didn't understand it, but kind of assumed it was the norm. The last couple of years have made me very curious about him
Plenty of ukrainians speak russian at least sometimes. Even now. Freely. It is possible to speak russian in Ukraine more freely than to speak russian in totalitarian Russia.
Some ukrainians liked russia, most of them stopped. Some might still do, but out of hundreds I know, from east and west, north and south, not a single one does.
I had a weird coworker that claimed to be Ukrainian and is married to a Russian woman. Mysteriously had to go see his dying family member right before it all started and he has not been heard from again. I just feel like he was some kind of weird Russian spy or something. He would call her 10 times during his shift and spoke in Russian and had an air of manipulative "kindness" that made you really wonder what the fuck this guy was involved with.
hell don't most people around russia detest the country? like even if two countries with slavic influence hate each other they will probably shake hands on hating russia more..