I am surprised Hitler didn’t offer Ukraine basically the same deal he gave Slovakia, of being a puppet state. He would have gotten much more support there, and probably would have had a much easier time fighting Stalin.
The Germans were initially greeted as liberators in Ukraine, and after the wall came down decades later the soviets admitted they’d deliberately sent agents into the occupied area as saboteurs and snipers to (successfully) draw German reprisals against Ukrainian civilians. As those reprisals worsened, the good feelings eroded.
while that may have been a political solution, it did not fit with the agenda.
the einsatzgruppen aktions made it impossible to placate the citizens, even though many of them initially were happy to see the invasion.