The difference is that Russian civilians and all of their belongings are not being murdered, raped, destroyed - only Ukrainians are. So one side has a much more powerful incentive not to take this war too far. My fear is that all of the NATO support and information is giving Ukrainian leadership a wrong assessment of their chances of ending this without reducing the entire country to rubble.

Essentially Ukraine has agreed to become a proxy for NATO in a bid to cripple Russian power. NATO has little lose if this fails, but Ukraine's leaders are gambling the lives and livelihoods of an awful lot of people. I do wish I am wrong and they are right, but as I said elsewhere, I don't beleive Russia will stop at anything not to let that happen.

Do the Ukrainian people have no agency? We’ve already seen mass defections in the contested regions by locals who felt the Russian government was the better master. The people still fighting in Ukraine appear to _want_ to fight Russia regardless of the damage it’s incurring to them. Theyre far less likely to be candidates being tricked into fighting unlike the Russian conscript POWs reporting that they were just loaded into trucks and didn’t realize they were being brought to a war

Of course they have agency. Many, perhaps most, of those who have been allowed to have fled the country. It is of course their right to stay and fight for anything they believe in.

When I say I don't think it's in their best interest to do so, and that I think they are misjudging Russia's determination if they believe they can win, I'm not taking away their agency. As such, I don't believe my leaders are doing them a service when they are supplying them with weapons and military intel, and if it were in my power, I would stop this supply (all the leadership, and the vast majority of the public, in my country is almost rabidly anti-Russian and pro-NATO, so this is an extremely theoretical exercise).

In the end, I believe NATO is playing chicken with Russia, but putting Ukraine in the speeding car instead of driving it themselves. I don't think this is wise, and definitely not good for Ukraine.

I just cant grok that viewpoint. As an American the French did the same thing to us in the Revolutionary war that we are doing to Ukraine, i.e. supplying arms to another nation to fight a proxy war against their enemy. Even while knowing that and with the benefit of getting to peruse historical documents rather than figure this out pre communications technology, I still appreciate that they stepped up and helped us when we wanted to fight. I can't imagine the Ukranians as being any different.