The Holocaust is not the end all be all of what defines a genocide. The man who created the word wasn’t even trying to limit it to that when he was fleeing the Holocaust because he realized that there is more than one way to destroy a people even whilst the Germans were abjectly and mechanically destroying his people in a gruesome manner.

Here is Putin on the record in a speech he gave:

“ Putin said in a Monday speech: "Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood. There has never been a sustainable statehood in Ukraine."

He argued that Ukraine was a creation of the Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin, its first leader, despite extensive evidence of a distinctive Ukrainian culture before that.

Putin also made a claim that Ukraine was a part of Russia's historic territory.

He said in his speech: "Let me emphasize once again that Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space.”

Here is the link for additional context including some nice words about having ties to Ukraine not dissimilar to what you just said: https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-denies-reviving-russia...

Maybe there is a cultural dissonance here and what Putin said means something completely different in Russian, but this to me reads as someone walking a fine line trying very hard not to admit that his goal is to erase Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as distinct from Russia and the Russian people. That was in February two days before launching a full scale invasion of Ukraine, and I don’t trust that the “official” reasons are the real ones. Putin is former KGB: deceiving foreigners and citizens alike is literally his bread and butter.