Agree. The Russian public can fail to understand what was the point of an endless war in Afghanistan. The Russian public correctly could not see any connection to far off Afghanistan; it was costly and a drain; and it was not even clear how Soviet victory in Afghanistan enhanced the Soviet Union in anyway.
Novorussya, as the east and littoral of Ukraine appears to be referred to by Russians, is seen as territories that are historically Russian, has Russian minorities who increasingly want out, and worse have governments that are increasingly anti Russia and anti Russian.
Novorussya, or "new Russia" is an 19th century term of the Tsarist empire that was reanimated by Putin to re-establish former Tsarist and Soviet imperial ownership. Nominally it included the black sea coast and some part of eastern Ukraine, especially the Donbas. It's 'definition' as "Russian" aside from historic conquest by Russian Tsars is that of being one of Russia's (or Muskuvoy's) history of many internal colonializations. Russians migrated into and took over some areas as "theirs" and in the meantime, under the Soviets, millions of resistant heritage peoples of Ukraine were ethnically cleansed and shipped to the far east.
Complicating the definition is the contradictory Russian views of Ukrainians as really Russians and are therefore illegitimate as a separate nation, which is in tension with their common view that Russians are different in language and culture and they should own the east half the country, and the remainder in the west can be taken by Poland (or otherwise left to wither with those western Ukrainians).
This is, as those of us familiar with Russian "logic", a case of having your cake and eating it too (i.e. "you are really Russian except when we say you are not").
Anyway, while Putin has adopted these typical Russian nationalist views he also adds his own expansive ambitions ; all Russians are compatriots, which is defined as anyone who is a Russian speaker, and they are protected "regardless of whether they want it or need it and irrespective of the fact that they live in another sovereign state." (Catherine Wanner, ‘“Fraternal” nations and challenges to sovereignty in Ukraine" American Ethnologist (August 2014), p.432.)
As for what Russian minorities wanted regarding separatism was, and even more so is, irrelevant. Only in Crimea and parts (not the whole) of the Donbas were ethno Russians a majority. More importantly since 2014 the identification with Russia plummeted. The Party of Regions imploded. And upon the invasion, even recognized pro Russian sympathizers refused to cooperate with the invaders (the Mayor of Odesa, the Mayor of Kyrvyi Rih (Zelensky's home town)). The vast majority of Ukrainians in "New Russia", including those who speak as Russians, don't want to be part of Putin's "New Russia".
Putin is simply playing the "ethnic card" and the diaspora as a breaker of nations, usable for the purpose of destroying consolidated states in the formerly in the Soviet imperial boundaries. He could give a fart about what the people in those spaces want or yearn for.
