It may come as a shock to you, but the world superpower is literally only came into existence two hundred and fifty years ago and both Empires you mentioned no longer exist with their successor states only having bare basic claims to having the Ukraine under there 'influence'
And that makes it a young world superpower. But going off from that, the local countries with their own history in the region (nevermind Ukrainians themselves) may have a longer going perspective on the matter, and Russia's obviously self interested argument of their natural, inherent, eternal and sacred entitlement to that region may not seem that all that obvious to them. After all, they used to rule most of it mere couple centuries ago themselves, and Russia, considering the later state of things, obviously never respected other's territorial claims nearly as much as it would wish its own claims to be respected, which doesn't seem to have changed much.
Several empires of Europe had to get over losing their much greater "spheres of influence", i don't see why Russia should be special in that regard.
Now you are from Poland, so you have a closer prospective of the the Ukrainian Russian relationship what is your opinion on them joining NATO in detail?
If Ukraine can get its shit together enough to be trusted to not leak shit or otherwise fuck shit up, why not. They want to be in NATO for the very same reason Poland and other former WP countries joined - as a layer of protection from Russia's variable perspective on the sovereignty of countries in that region.
1. True, but the military advantage was entirely with the Ukranians if they had but used it competently which they did not.
Ukrainian military was in absolute shambles and was a significant force on paper alone.
2. Ukraine had regular training from NATO military missions since the 90s. Apparently as with the Georgians, it was useless.
Not nearly regular and large scale enough to compensate for the fact they never had the funding to do any reasonable training themselves, that is if local corruptocrats didn't sell off the fuel they had.
3. Going by their other forays, not really and being a conscript force, is better suited for the mass warfare between peer competitors that a fight with Ukraine will entail. They did after all crush the Chechs and tamed them while losing far fewer men than the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting and losing to 3rd rate militias less trained and organized than the Chechs. They also spent vastly less money doing so.
Ironically, in the end they did crush Chechenya with money, not force. Specifically, by throwing lots of money at one of local strongmen, and letting him administer the money and the region on the basis on his understanding with Putin.
The economic sanctions imposed by Western governments on Russia and plummeting oil prices have necessitated stringent cuts in funding to Russia's constituent subjects. But there is one glaring exception to that trend: The Chechen Republic is seemingly exempt from such belt-tightening.
www.rferl.org
This is quite telling of how that relationship works.
Consequently, given its meager tax base and paucity of other revenues, Chechnya has remained dependent on subsidies from the federal center to finance even basic social provisions. For the past several years, such subsidies have accounted for 80-82 percent of Chechnya's annual budget (down from 87 percent in 2010-11).
On the other hand, Sokolov said, insofar as many Moscow decision-makers still perceive Kadyrov, if not as the guarantor of stability in Chechnya then as the lesser of two evils, few are willing to incur his wrath by publicly advocating a further cut in funding for Chechnya -- even at the risk of public protests elsewhere in Russia against the special economic status that Kadyrov is seen to enjoy.
So no, they aren't tamed. They are bribed into contentment through the rest of Russia sponsoring them an upper second world grade lifestyle which they would have never been able to acquire for themselves otherwise. If money stopped flowing, trouble would brew up again very soon.
It is only doable (as you can see from the article, still at a non-insignificant cost) for Russia because Chechenya is really not that big of a region, with population of slightly less than 1.5 million people.
For comparison, DNR and LNR combined have almost 3x as many people, which is why Russia is not eager to just take them in and fund their war recovery, nevermind significantly subsidize whole, over 40 million people country of Ukraine, to keep it from wishfully looking around for a richer patron.
So yeah, for all the talk of how Russia does things different, it also has its own tiny "nation building" mess with an Islamic population, and in relative terms its also a drain on money for them.