To Russia (and Ukraine) with Love

Having grown up in the Cold War, Russia scares me.  I don't care what you say, about geopolitical reality.  I understand that the Soviet Union doesn't even exist any more, I get that what I grew up thinking of as this monolithic, communist juggernaut, is actually a number of very different nations, each with their own quirks and each with their own brokenness.  I admit, that I do not understand the situation in Ukraine as well as I should.  It seems that the more I read about it, the more confusing it gets.
It reminds me of when I started reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, it took me 150 pages to start to be able to sort out who the characters were, let alone decipher the plot and why certain people were behaving the way they did.  But over the years, I have learned to love the Russians through their literature, I have learned to love Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn.  I have learned to love the way they can be so open about almost everything, and yet it feels like you really have to work to actually get to know them.  I have learned to admire the capacity that the Russian heart has to suffer, and find meaning in suffering.  Especially living as I do in the lap of American privilege, I know that the very people I grew up fearing have a lot to teach me.
But I'm worried that the legacy of the long dark winter is going to get in the way of what the Russian heart has to give to the world.  Solzhenitsyn managed to win a Nobel Prize in literature despite having much of his work suppressed by the Soviets, but by and large the Cold War crushed Russian culture under a frozen combat boot.  Now we have Vlad Putin, former KGB, cold-warrior extraordinaire, flexing the muscles that he still apparently has (numerous shirtless pics have provided ample fodder for comedians of all nations, except Russians).  Putin is a serious man, and Putin is what scares me about Russia.
He's a holdover from the Soviet system that I grew up believing would be our primary antagonist in the war that would finally end life on earth.  He's strong, he's smart, he's paranoid, powerful, and he's living forty years in the past (no wonder Sarah Palin admires him).  He has been compared to one of the villains in a James Bond movie, which from the outside looking in seems ominously accurate.
I wouldn't be too surprised if Putin appeared on television with a maniacal smile (the only kind of smile I imagine he's really capable of) and announced a plan to blow up the moon.  However, I think his aspirations are a bit more mundane, and deadly practical: hold on to the Ukraine.
It should be noted, if my historical perspective is accurate, holding on to the Ukraine has been a bit of a pre-occupation for Russian leaders going back a long way.  Now, I'm grabbing at dimly remembered seventh grade geography class here, but I seem to remember something about Ukraine being sort of like Nebraska is to the US, not our favorite vacation spot, but man do they grow a lot of food.
The problem has long been that the people on the European side of the Ukraine, feel rather differently about Moscow than the people on the Russian side.  Over the years the Ukraine has seen it's share of fighting, and it usually ends up being the place where megalomaniacs meet their match: Napolean, Hitler, to name the big ones.  I'm sure Putin has made note of those events, because they are part of the history of his Russia, in those cases the Ukraine was the reason why he didn't grow up speaking French or German.
What worries me is that, for a while at least, his Soviet comrades did manage to control Ukraine, maybe he thinks he can do it again.  I suspect not, but I'm worried that there might be a lot of blood before that bet is settled.
I'm praying for Ukraine.