why would you believe a single word that Putin says though? This is the guy who among many other lies said on camera in 2014 that the green men that took over Crimea and were armed to the teeth were just some random locals and not Russian military. Just a couple of days before the current invasion denied any intention to do so while detailed attack plans were signed long before etc.

And besides taking pieces from your neighboring country, waging long shadow war in Donbas, telling everyone how Ukraine is not really a country anyway and then invading doesn't really seem such a great plan for unifying nations.

As far as I understand relations before Russians and Ukrainians were pretty OK before 2014 events. With his own actions Putin has made a country that has roughly 1/3 of the population of Russia mostly against him. Healing these wounds and relationships will take decades even once the war ends.

it pains me that in 21 century we still have to explain that voting at gunpoint from 3rd party (armed occupation from another country) can't possibly be considered valid.

It's the same strategy Russia used to annex neighboring countries before WW2. - first they get their military in by any means necessary - then they take down any means of mass communication, TV towers, radio etc. Any leaders of the opposition will be killed or jailed. Only censored Russian propaganda will be shown. - then occupation army will establish a puppet government which will stage a referendum which asks to join Russia in some form. At that point it's rather irrelevant how the people vote because as Stalin said, it's not important who votes but rather who does the counting.

I think Anne Applebaum in one of her books has described how it went down in the countries that Russia annexed. Looked eerily like following a flowchart and evidently still works and sounds plausible to some people.

Scottish independence referendum seems to be a rather good example how such independence referendums really should look like to be accepted by the world.

that choice between giving in to "small" russian demands vs. fighting has played of in history multiple times and even specifically with Russia. For example after signing MRP with Germany to divide up europe between them, Russia amassed huge army on the borders of baltic states and Finland and demanded allowing Russian military bases in these countries and establishment of russian friendly governments.

Finland went to war over it, took huge losses but managed to fight back well enough to stay independent even though some territory was lost.

Countries that gave in to these demands without much resistance to avoid huge bloodshed were occupied shortly and lost their independence for 50 years. Multiple rounds of deportation to siberia and executions of anyone who had military, police or government background were done over the next years so in the end it's not clear if the loss of life was any smaller for these countries if it would have been if they fought back.

So in hindsight it seems better choice was to fight back and have a chance of freedom.

PS. it's not single demand at all, you should read more of Putins speeches and writings, especially those meant for Russian audiences. For example the one televised on 21.02.2022 where he goes on and on about some mystical "west" that has tried to destroy the russian for over a century and how ukraine has no right to exist anyway etc. That NATO talk is mostly for western audiences, internally the message seems to be more about re-establishing the russian empire (which he seems to think is god given right) and talk about superiority of the russian civilization (ruskiy mir). So everything indeed sounds eerily similar to sittuation and delusions that led to WW2.