I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, so I'll just make a few observations and leave it at that.

I get my news solely from western sources (US and EU, English and German). I don't speak any Russian nor have I lived there. TBH since I'm not fluent in Russian and having no real way of judging Russian sources I for the most part discount much of Russian reporting as propaganda.

Similarly, history is very interesting, but who wrote the history books you are reading is just as important. The history books I read in the 70s and 80s in the US were nearly all written by western white men, and vetted by the cultural winners of the day. The "history" of the American west that we "know" in 2023 is very different to what we "knew" and were taught as the "facts" in 1973.

My wife is Czech. We have compared notes on our childhoods on opposite sides of the iron curtain. Unironically, the propaganda we both were inundated with as kids were virtual mirrors of each other.

Nikolaus II? That was 100 years before the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, a hereditary dynasty, with 70 years of Soviet authoritarianism in between before the current pseudo-democracy of modern Russia.. The Tsar's time is good for some background context. but the geopolitical world of 1917 is vastly different than 2017.

Just as with US history, who wrote the history books about Nikolaus II matter just as much. My grandmother had a US history book from the 1920s about "The Great War" as it was known then. The "facts" about the Germans were little more than xenophobic screeds.

I reference only activity from 1991 till now, which is ~30 years. The cultural background of course plays a role in Russia caring about the ethnic Russians in the Donbass. Not (IMO) in the sense of reconstituting the USSR or the Russian Empire, but in Russian domestic politics where Putin was weakened by not helping them and his political rivals using it to their political advantage. Again, this all comes from the western press.

If you believe I have some facts wrong, you should state what you think they are. I make mistakes all the time, and have no problem if someone points out a real error. I don't accept anyone calling me out without backing it up.