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It strikes me that both Russia and Ukraine have some notable historical ties to the Germanic/Norse peoples of old. The Tsardom of Russia does of course go back in furthest detail to Rurik of Holmgard and Oleg of Novgorod, two Varangians kinsmen who settled and ruled over areas of what is now Russia. These ties were known or commented on as far back as the 1700s, and even as late as WW1 the royal families of German and Russia were quite close (being first cousins along with the British royals as well), with many Russian nobles in the Baltics having been of more modern German descent.
With that in mind, is it an impossibility that if persuaded of that heritage Hitler would alter or accommodate his intentions for the European portion of the USSR? Perhaps the integration of the Ukraine proper into his greater Germany, in line with an effort to 're-Germanize' the native Ukrainian population? Or perhaps the creation of various smaller Russian and Ukrainian polities ruled over by a German elite, not unlike the initial Varangian settlements?