Two things can be true at once - that it does indeed suck to be under the heel of Putin and Russia and Putin and many irredentist Russians do aspire to reconstitute the Russian Empire territorially to have a paranoid buffer between its heartland and NATO and that does suck for those in the way, but also we have a nuclear deterrent and hugely better conventional readiness and there is no good reason to sacrifice all these lives and risk a wider war drawing lines so far upstream of our national interest. Don't get drawn into false dichotomies that either Russia is benign/acting in defense or we should oppose them everywhere with blood and treasure. Ukrainians lives would be made worse under Russian domination, but will be even worse governing the ashes.
Two things can be true at once - that it does indeed suck to be under the heel of Putin and Russia and Putin and many irredentist Russians do aspire to reconstitute the Russian Empire territorially to have a paranoid buffer between its heartland and NATO and that does suck for those in the way, but also we have a nuclear deterrent and hugely better conventional readiness and there is no good reason to sacrifice all these lives and risk a wider war drawing lines so far upstream of our national interest. Don't get drawn into false dichotomies that either Russia is benign/acting in defense or we should oppose them everywhere with blood and treasure. Ukrainians lives would be made worse under Russian domination, but will be even worse governing the ashes.