Anti-Russian people like to forget that from 2014 to 2022 Luhansk and Donetsk asked to join Russia...and Russia refused.

Of course the geopolitical fallout would have been large (way larger than Crimea).

What gets forgotten is your point Russia didn't want to "own" those territories. Russia did not want to take on the administrative overhead. Particularly Russia didn't want to take on the responsibility for Ukrainian pensions.