Austrians are nationality wise Austrians. But ethnically they are Germans. The so called “Germans” you are referring to is the nationality. But ethnically they are also Germans. They happen to be northern Germans.
A real German unification would occur if the so called Federal Republic of Germany (which I prefer to call North Germany) merged with Austria (South Germany). German has two meanings. One is ethnic German, which native Austrians are, and the other meaning is a citizen of Germany.
As for the case with Russians and Ukrainians. Russians are a nationality and an ethnicity. The difference between Russians and Ukrainians is exactly the same difference between English and Scottish. The Ukrainians speak pretty much the same language as the Russians.
It’s only a few certain words different. They are both the same eurasian race and of the same Slavic ethnicity, they are culturally similar. They were once part of the Kievan Rus, the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian empire and the Soviet Union.
It was Nikita Khrushchev who ensured this separatist mentality among ukrainians by giving them autonomy from Russian SFSR. I mean as far as the nation of russia is concerned, ethnic slavic russians aren’t the only ethnicity there.
There are various Turkic groups in the Eurasian Steppe as well as Native Siberians (cousins of Native Americans, who are small in number because of the Imperial regime of the Tsars commit genocide against them.) in the far east as far as Ukraine the region or nation is concerned.
Ukraine is simply the borderland between Russia and Poland. So if the Russians have got rights over Eastern Ukraine, this could mean Poland has got rights over most of Western Ukraine, and also Romania has rights over Odessa and Chernivtsi – historically speaking that is.
The Ukrainians as an ethnic group are very much similar to Russians, same way Scots are ethnically similar to English men (i.e both are Germanic, both are part of British isles, their languages are very similar).
You could also say the similarity between the Ukrainians and Russians are much like the similarity between the Pakistanis and Indians, where Pakistanis mostly are ethnic Indian muslims, with a minority being Iranic (Pashtun and Balochi).
Pakistanis speak much speak the same language as Indians, except their version has got more islamic words associated in its dictionary, while Indians have got more sanskrit words. You could even say Russian and Ukrainian is similar in parallel to the similarity between Hindi and Punjabi (both spoken in india and pakistan, both similar ethnic groups).
