Меня пугал не столько укол, сколько вид шприца.

Because пугать works like to frighten/scare someone:

• что-то пугает кого-то = something frightens someone

So in this sentence:

• меня = me
• укол / вид шприца = the thing doing the frightening

Grammatically, меня is the accusative form of я. It happens to look the same as the genitive form, but here its job is accusative: it is the direct object of пугал.

Because it agrees with the thing that was frightening the speaker.

Here the contrasted nouns are:

• укол — masculine singular
• вид — masculine singular

So the verb is also masculine singular past: пугал.

If the subject were feminine, you would get пугала; if neuter, пугало; if plural, пугали.

Пугал is the past tense imperfective form of пугать.

In this sentence it means something like:

• frightened me
• scared me
• was what I found scary

The imperfective is natural here because the sentence describes a general source of fear, not one single sudden moment of fright.

Compare:

• Меня пугал вид шприца. — The sight of the syringe scared me / was scary to me.
• Меня испугал вид шприца. — The sight of the syringe frightened me at that moment.

This is a very common Russian pattern meaning:

• not so much X as Y

So:

• Меня пугал не столько укол, сколько вид шприца.
• What scared me was not so much the injection as the sight of the syringe.

Here сколько does not mean its usual standalone sense of how much/how many. In this pattern, не столько ... сколько ... works as one fixed contrastive structure.

Укол usually means:

• an injection
• a shot
• literally, a prick/stick

In this sentence, it refers to the actual needle stick or injection itself, not the syringe as an object.

So the contrast is:

• укол — the painful procedure
• вид шприца — the visual appearance of the syringe

Because вид here means sight or appearance, and it often takes the genitive:

• вид чего? — the sight/appearance of what?

So:

• вид шприца = the sight of the syringe

Forms:

• шприц — nominative singular
• шприца — genitive singular

This is a normal noun + genitive relationship in Russian.

No. Here вид means sight, appearance, or look.

Russian вид can mean different things depending on context, for example:

• вид спорта — a type of sport
• вид из окна — a view from the window
• вид шприца — the sight/appearance of a syringe

In this sentence, because the topic is fear, the meaning is clearly the sight of the syringe, not the type of syringe.

Russian word order is flexible, and moving words changes emphasis more than basic meaning.

Starting with меня puts focus on the experiencer:

• Меня пугал не столько укол, сколько вид шприца.

This feels natural if the speaker is talking about their own reaction.

A more English-like order is also possible:

• Не столько укол, сколько вид шприца пугал меня.

That version is grammatical too, but it sounds a bit more formal or marked. The original order is very natural in speech and writing.

Because не столько ..., сколько ... is a paired contrastive construction, and Russian normally separates the two parts with a comma.

So:

• не столько укол, сколько вид шприца

The comma helps show the contrast clearly: not so much X, as Y.

Yes. That is a very good natural English translation.

But Russian builds it differently. Literally, Russian says something closer to:

• The injection frightened me not so much as the sight of the syringe did

So the Russian sentence uses:

• the thing causing fear as the grammatical subject
• меня as the object

English often prefers to recast that idea as I was frightened by.... Both express the same meaning well.