I was born in Russia, Russian-speaking, citizen of Lithuania, living and working in the UK and US.
I lived in Russia in my childhood and then few years during studies in university.
I heard the term of "civilized world" only in Eastern Europe/Russia, exceptionally in context of "We, former ex-Warsaw bloc joined NATO and EU, the civilised countries and thus also became civilised and you, the USSR are barbarians"
I read PISA Adult Skills Survey which is not simply cognitive abilities measurement
https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/The_Survey%20_of_Adult_Skills_Reader%27s_companion_Second_Edition.pdf
https://webfs.oecd.org/piaac/puf-data/
, but also how fit are the nations for contemporary world (how debatable is this?).
And what I found is that Russia scored really well, better than "civilized world" of grand nations such as Germany, France, UK, US, Canada, NZ.
There were no special tests for Ukraine, however there were many Ukraine-born individuals living in other countries where PISA test was held, predominantly in Central and Western Europe. And, unsurprisingly, the Ukrainians showed significantly worse result. Even if we compare them with Russians living in same countries.
If we look at the stats of World Bank, the Ukraine is/was the only country of Warsaw bloc which has not exceeded its Soviet level. Isn't it because of their greedy rulers? Why Russians aren't so poor and ignorant because of their greedy ruler?
Ukraine warmly accepted many far-rights from Russia (think of Azov, Kraken and other bastards) and gave them control of the country by embedding them into armed forces and their leaders into government bodies. Ukraine in general welcomed Nazism.
In every single country of former USSR, except Estonia, the Russians show better cognitive skills comparing to natives.
Almost all family members of my grandparents were killed by Lithuanians in early 40s (Holocaust in Lithuania), which is now considered by lithuanian history as "fight for freedom". And Lithuanian nowadays leadership consists of direct descendants of those who signed orders to kill my grandparents.