Incidentally, I've been saying that Russia would annex the productive eastern regions, leaving a rump state in western Ukraine that Europe would be forced to prop up with billions, or face a massive refugee crisis from the very start. The mainstream press has finally caught up. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/480378/348104
Tsarist Russia, despite its later economical backwardness, was also a power in its own right. Germany fought WW1 because it feared Russia surpassing it, just as UK fought WW1 because the very same year germany's economy surpassed the british one (not including the dominions)