...I had heard Western news reports that an invasion might be imminent. Ukrainians were supposed to be our close friends, and we had much in common, including a history of fighting Germany as part of the same country.
Apparently, at least one of the elites of Russian government is so poorly educated as to not know that the Ukrainians never considered being part of the USSR a "friendly arrangement" from their perspective (20+ million dead in the
Holodomor tends to chill friendships for a long damned time, doncha know), and they so disliked being held in the USSR at gunpoint that when the Germans invaded in 1941, many of them JOINED the Nazis in fighting the Russians.
To borrow a line from Marvel comics character Hawkeye:
"You and I remember [the Great Patriotic War] very differently."