It all started back in 1991 when hopeful Ukrainians looked to the US to support their struggle for independence from oppressive Soviet rule. President Bush came to Kiev. . . and delivered his shockingly pro-Russian speech that has been nicknamed “Chicken Kiev Speech.”
Bush made it clear that he expected Ukraine to remain under Russia’s degrading and exploitative tutelage. He was so eager to promote Russian colonial interests that he even departed from the text of the speech he was supposed to give and inserted an aside about the “suicidal nationalism” of Ukrainians.
Since then, the pattern remained in place: Republicans in the White House were always eager to defend Russian colonialism. Senator John McCain was planning to change that but he failed to get elected.
This wasn’t even that long ago yet many people already forgot how desperate the US Republicans were to preserve the Soviet Union. Of course, they wanted to see it modified under Gorbachev but they were eager to protect its territorial integrity.
Clarissa's Blog 
Even Romney was not very Russia-friendly.
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Traditionally, republicans were much more into the idea of international relations as an arena in which Great Powers threaten each other and at time fight. Democrats were more into the idea of international relations as a medium for win-win cooperation to solve problems.
The Great Powers idea requires (or works best with) fewer players.
Also official US policy is almost always about safeguarding territorial integrity. This is partly Great Powers thinking and partly leftover Civil War trauma. The US always assumes that the only way that countries can break up is Bosnia and mass bloodshed.
Support for Lithuania around the same time was partly an exception because the Baltic countries had been invaded and incorporated into the USSR in living memory and so their independence was seen more as a return to territorial integrity and not a violation of it.
Ukraine wasn’t/isn’t distinct enough from Russia (from the US perspective) for the US to be able to think of it as a real country (this is where maintaining rather than neglecting a separate language comes in handy). Granted there should have been State Department advisors who knew better, but area experts are usually ignored (another reason US international policy is so terrible).
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