[From a comment to this blog]
I think an interesting difference between Ukraine and Russia is that when the histories of the two nations diverge, the Cossack’s free state, where the political leaders were elected, emerges in Ukraine and is an important part of the Ukrainian national myth (by myth I don’t mean false or not true, every nationality has myths which contribute to their identities); while Russia is autocratic all the way through history. What is also interesting is that Putin is making a similar arguement to the one that Peter the Great made, that the Russian mentality is not suitable for democracy and must be governed by a strong leader.