what’s also evident is what he didn’t seem to get: appropriate attachment—the strong and requisite bond between a parent and a child that leads to a healthy life and without which children can die or be damaged.
We create monsters, large and small through the neglect of the child's needs. We continuously create them and new, large scale events like wars create the next generation.
For centuries, Kyiv was looking westwards and was a part of a union with Lithuania and Poland until it was eventually conquered and absorbed by the Russian Empire, by the czarist empire. But even after that, Ukrainians remained a separate people to a large extent, and it's important to know that because this is really what is at stake in this war.
Putin's twisted logic rests on the assumption that Russia's conquering of Ukraine by war for a brief part of history justifies his (false) assertion that Ukraine was always a part of Russia.