Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba to Western countries: "We offer you the best deal: you don't sacrifice your soldiers, give us weapons and money, and we will finish the job."

Wow. Yes. That person has issues.

It's funny because from my perspective. Russia is just a genocide addicted as the west is. All countries have it's demons. And the atrocities of one does not justify the atrocities of another. No country is perfect. Because it's the nature of humanity to be imperfect. We always divide ourselves along lines even if it's detrimental to our own survival. I wish we could reconcile but peace generally comes after the conflict. And I'm sure you know it's too far gone for that now.

The Ukrainians are fighting for their own country. Russia is the fool who thought it could waltz into a foreign country armed to the teeth and not expect resistance. They thought it would be all over in two days, instead it looks like you guys have fought to a stalemate. A battle of attrition. Sure the west is (or was) propping up the Ukraine, but guess what when a country feels like it's cornered, when it's patriotic and believes in its own betterment, they will fight to the last man without fear. To them it's simple. It's their families, their homes and their lives which Russia has uprooted. They didn't want any of this. Now they have it, they aren't going to sit idly by and let a foreign country do what they want in their own borders. No country will ever allow that. Sure they're humble enough to beg for help, but they will fight even without that. Even if it's a losing battle, because to them, it's win or die - it's win or lose their whole way of life, so they lash out like a cornered wolf. They don't care about the previous atrocities they don't care about which side is wrong or right. They care about what's happening now, on their own soil and will do anything in their power to stop it.

It's their home, and humanity will allways fight to defend our own homes, our own lives, and our own culture. We all believe in our basic right to live, and we will all fight for that right.

The situation in Israel is a lot less black and white. It's two groups who were unfortunately, deliberately split along awkward lines. Both want unification, they want the land they both have claim to, but in their own favour, both have committed unspeakable acts against each other in the past. Wether the initial attack by Palestine was false flag or foolhardy. It still matters that Israel are taking it a little too far. But that's what they do - back and forth. It's their inability to forgive past acts that make them always at each other's throats. Violence begets more violence. And the west seems to have an interest in assisting Israel, despite public opinion moving majorly against that interest.

Russia sanctioned-proof themselves in anticipation of the consequences of invading Ukraine. They have long history and experience after all since the Soviet days of international sanctions. However, autarky always shows to only have short term effect but in the long run, the severe consequences always catches up in the end. Just look at how Soviet Union led to its eventual demise and the war in Afghanistan accelerated that collapse. The war in Ukraine will do the same to the current regime.

Conversely, even though the EU had been dependent on Russian fossil fuel before, the boomerang effect you mentioned is only short to medium term because disruption in trade is always expected during a war. But this only pushed the EU to import American gas and accelerate the EU Green New Deal to compensate for the loss of Russian gas and oil.

With Russia only having 1/5th the GDP of Italy and endemic corruption, the failure to subdue Ukraine is only going to eat at the Russian economy and political prestige. Even if Russia wins or gets concessions, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Because loss of demographics (Russia is experiencing population decline before the war) will have severe consequences to the workforce and economy, the sanctions after the war will continue to hit the Russians, and the country will become more economically reliant to China and by extension politically as well. More importantly, the claim to stop NATO expansion just had the boomerang effect of just admitting two new nations into the alliance. With Russia tied in Ukraine, they loss influence in CSTO as member states resumed border clashes, especially with Armenia becoming frustrated on the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh.

It's funny that you would bring up Vietnam because there is a parallel there, just not the one you think. The regime in western Ukraine that US backing bears a lot of resemblance to the regime US was backing in south Vietnam, and it's now collapsing in exactly the same way.

What you don't seem to understand is that there was already a civil war between western and eastern Ukraine since the coup in 2014. Let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:

here's how the election in 2004 went:

this is the 2010 election:

As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:

Ukraine is not some homogeneous blob, but a country that's divided precisely along the current combat lines.