You mean 'under the Russian boot'. They already know what that is like, hence their resistance to a repeat performance.
The rest of the alternative reality stuff I'll not respond to, feel free to take that any way you want.
One guess how I'm inclined to take that...
The vast majority of Ukrainians are not responsible for their misfortunes over the last decade. Certainly they have my sympathy. Violent coups usually harm the societies in which they occur, so the tiny minority of Ukrainians who took part in that coup have harmed their nation and their fellow Ukrainians. That harm has taken the form of a Russian invasion, but if it had happened somewhere else at some other time (e.g. Iran, in 1953) the harm would have come anyway.
Eventually, if we survive long enough, humans will learn to organize (and re-organize!) ourselves without large-scale violence. Some had imagined that democracy might be a part of that, but few today seem to agree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHH10jIRJmQ
Ukrainians (and Georgians, and elderly Hungarians) are already well aware...
I'm not really sure what you are trying to argue here, this is pretty much settled history.