I think this is right. We see similar phenomenon in Russia and Ukraine. There are flashes of democracy sometimes but then they revert back to what they've always known. In the case of Russia/Ukraine it's the legacy of feudalism + strong ruler syndrome which was coopted by communism and which they still have not emerged from.

If anything, differences in political culture and history define Ukrainian-Russian conflict to the greater extent than language, nationalism or economics.

Given the last 30 years, the trend is going in opposite directions — where Russia reverts to their authoritarian baseline, Ukraine actually devolves central authority and especially presidential powers. Ukrainian constitution of 1996 literally has a transition plan to disperse the power of central executive authority into several distinct bodies.

Both trends are backed by centuries of history. To put that in a perspective: Ukraine had more democratic transitions of power in the last 10 years than Russian had in the last 300.

Things can only move forward so fast. Look at the French and Russian revolutions. It didn't take long for things to revert to autocratic strongman type governments but there was some progress that stuck.