I have some friends from the east of Ukraine, they have very different views from those in the west of the country. They tell me they would prefer to be closer to Russia but not part of Russia. They do not wish to be part of the EU at all. They also were totally against the protests and coup in Kiev.
Putin is doing the right thing here. It is indeed a shame the USSR broke apart, hopefully he can attempt to rebuild at least parts of it.
The EU would have never been able to expand as much if the USSR and Warsaw Pact had still existed and Washington would not have been able to be so aggressive. The main thing though is we would have had balance in this world.