Election Year or Fear!

[Trickytreesreds]

... or you could say the majority of the people in Georgia and in the Ukraine voted in pro European governments and those governments who had campaigned on closer ties to Europe followed the mandate the electorate had given them.

But again , you've skipped over it. Those regions were trapped in Ukraine and Georgia after the fall of the USSR.
Serbia/ Bosnia/ Croatia/Slovenia etc burst into violence after its fall. They didn't want any of the others ruling over them. So you can talk about mandates all you like, the Donbass/ Crimea have never accepted Ukraine dominance, but put up with it, until they were being dragged into the West.

Folks forget with Russians, that they trust the west very little.
History has taught them that. France/ Germany/ Britain have all inflicted pain on them at some point.
They were only happy with the buffer zone of the iron curtain after WW2. Since that fell, they feel encroached on ever since and the more of those areas join NATO and the EU, the worse they get.