That’s a completely delusional viewpoint. Russia can claim to need anything it wishes to, but that doesn’t entitle it or a resistance-free conquest. Russia invaded another sovereign country, which is obviously the thing that is costing all of those lives. The idea that you can invade your neighbor and then hyperventilate about them fighting back is childish and naive. It’s comical to rain artillery fire on another country and then blame America for proving the ammunition to shoot back. Again, your frame only makes sense if you think Russia has some special, magical right to invade its neighbors and kill their citizens, which practically no one outside of Russia believes.

Yes, it’s killing lots of Ukrainians, causing an energy crisis, and enhancing China’s relative position. Those are the horrifying consequences of Russia’s invasion, not of the fight against it. There’s no world in which you get to invade another country and then shame them for fighting back, at least without the derision of the rest of to world. What did you think would happen? “Ah, Russians think they ‘need’ to do this, better lay down and die”,

Of course the US is funding and arming Ukraine. It would be foolish not to. But what game are Ukrainians a pawn in? The fight for their own survival? If Russia doesn’t want to be “depleted” it need merely leave. The decision has always been in Putin’a hands.

Russia has the same degree of agency as any other country, but you are acting like it’s the pawn in its own foolish war. Perhaps Russia is a nation of children who think they are merely blown about by the wind, unable to take responsibility for even their most explicit actions?

Putin repeatedly kicked a massive tiger and then acted hurt, full of righteous indignation, when the tiger’s claws came out. No amount of mental gymnastics is going to change that.

Russia cannot leave or NATO will let Ukraine in and put troops/bombs on the edge of Russian. Failing to understand that makes you an easy pawn. Calling millions of people children tells me you are out of your depth.

You are the one claiming Russians are children, but with different words. You say Russia has no choice, but you are also claiming the American response is a strategy to prolong the war, as opposed to, say, the natural reaction. So in your telling, Russian behavior is compelled and mechanical, utterly lacking agency, and the US is, somehow, from the other side of the planet, the one with agency on how the war goes. That is a child and an adult.

Pawns are the players not making choices.

I don’t think that; I think instead that Russia is being foolish and contemptible in prosecuting an unjust and insane war, and is surprised to find out the world isn’t playing along. They are adults and they are responsible for their actions. And obviously the war is their action.