Perhaps genes; there are a lot of alleles for the enzymes that control alcohol metabolism. East Asians are notorious for fast alcohol metabolism. Some Native Americans for slow alcohol metabolism.
Also self-image and attitude. The Donbas has been downtrodden for a while. They went from being the darlings under the USSR, a huge concentration of heavy-industry proletarians to being the rump of empire in a break-away province. Fertility was down all through the Russophone area; drinking was up. It's the Rust Belt in Ukraine and, surprisingly, Ukraine's Appalachia (you'd think that was the case for the far West, and that's also partially true). Russia views it the way the US views the northern Mexican border under NAFTA.
In Russia there have been morality campaigns. Not much of that in Ukraine. But also Putin's elevated--through some acceptable kinds of things, but also through promoting arrogance and jingoism--national pride, and that first levelled off male self-image and stopped the decline in the average male life expectancy and then increased it.
The other thing to watch out for is a difference in what's consumed and when. The West of Ukraine is more Central European. You have a beer with lunch, a beer with dinner. At the end of the day you've had two beers, and while you're liver's not especially happy it's not like you're sloshed. Kids start drinking beer or wine with meals early and that increases average consumption. In the Czech Republic this had been the case for centuries. Older teens binge, but I'm not sure that it's much worse than here. It's hard to tell--in the Czech Republic the binging was public, but here it's mostly private. Same for when adults get drunk. But Russia doesn't do nearly as much beer and wine, instead going for vodka and more binges. It's a different culture from West to East and I'm not sure where the dividing line is in Ukraine.
As for death rates, you have to remember that these are cultures with low levels of lethal violence. Until very recently, in E. Ukraine there weren't hardly any guns and the police don't carry firearms. Public transportation and the relative expense of cars and gasoline makes drunk driving harder. Alcohol's more of a problem, but you have to skim off the top causes of teen death in the US before you can compare alcohol-related deaths between the US and Ukraine or Russia.
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