Sneak "western" in there and move the goalposts, why don't you.

Ukraine is culturally, geographically and geopolitically a European nation.

Russia and Ukraine are historically and culturally European. Russian expansion deep into Siberia is a relatively recent phenomenon. Sure, they're not Western European, but that's not what you said in your original comment.

You just moved the goalpost from "European" to "Western European", excluding Eastern Europeans because they're inconvenient to your point.

BTW, most Russians are European, living west of the Urals.

Russia is much more European than Yemen. So is Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Albania, and Macedonia.

Moscow and, especially, St. Petersburg are pretty European historically and culturally. Western Russia accounts for 77% of Russia's population and is predominately influenced by the culture of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kyiv...

Europe isn't just Italy, Spain, & France...

Not every European country is Western European culturally...

Technically, the last traces of what is known as Western Europe (i.e. catholic/protestant culture/architecture) end somewhere in the western Ukraine. Orthodoxy/Byzantium culture then starts in the eastern Ukraine.

The Russian world is a Muskovite imperialist invention my dear friend. You can't write Russian history without involving basically any other European country. Well, you could maybe leave Liechtenstein and Portugal out?