Reminds me of the results of a large Slavic country going to war with a much smaller, once subordinate, now independent republic that was the source of their best engineers.

It's a false analogy. Ukraine was no such source. It's just happened after WW2, that as a part or rebuilding a devastated territory, plus a better climate, resulted in USSR relocating several of its best aero/space and in general military institutions to what is now known as Ukraine. For example, their space engines engineers were educated in Russia till 2008 at least, maybe even longer.