Selfishly this means I'd like Ukraine's per capita to be a good deal lower than Russia's lol so that if we do incorporate them into the Union State our population increases and our per capita goes down.
I don't really know, if you look at prognosis for Union State we shouldn't be that far of from China by 2028 at which point having lower peer capita won't help us much as we will be valid rival and opposed to China we repeatedly showed willingness to confront USA which will probably put us somewhat ahead of China at threat level, or USA may simply decide to keep it's positive relations with China, or strike some kind of deal and focus on us.
So i generally prefer to have higher peer Capita income overall, that way at least we are preserving our own sozial cohesion by not impowershing Russia overall.
Sitting in the background probably won't be an option for us as we will be viable rival weary soon and we are more confrontional abd openly expansionist.
I can say for 100% that the Russian leadership does not have in plans incorporating states like Georgia, Armenia and stans (except for Russian dominated oblasts in Kazakhstan), as they have learned the lesson from USSR. The Union State now consisting of Russia, Belarus, Transnistria and Gaguazia is a Slavic and Orthodox union and it will remain this way. The Russian leadership does not want to repeat problems with Caucasus and Central Asia like USSR had back in 80s. Also they learned the lesson from the Soviet collapse in 80s very well, and are making sure that none of Soviet mistakes would be ever repeated. Also, with the Union State we are in process of 3rd Russian imperial project (after Russian Empire and the USSR) , whether we like it or not.
Yea this time around Russian leadership is more focused on creation of more coherent State similar to Western Europe , USA and China opposed to letting ideology be it's binding glue.
It's also focused on economic sustainability of the project.
Generally if Ukraine is annexed we should probably consider changing the name of our union to Eastslavia, or Eastslavian union...
Generally idea is to have an identity that binds all three main member states, or more accurately Ukraine and Russia. Given that we upcoming entity will be even more Slavic dominated than Russian Federation, will be mostly Slavic culturally we may as well go with it.
We could of course add every member state name, or names of three main members but then we are just going back into individual national identity and Euroasian identity is to vague and most of the member state's probably cannot resonate with it . East Slavic identity should be best option.
Other option could be to use Union of Rus as official name to invoke Kievan Rus.