Well, I have great respect for you and your opinions generally here, but you are simply wrong and lack experience in the region.

I have friends (and family) on both sides of that conflict. Anecdotally, all my Russian friends had to flee the draft (even those who spoke positively about the "special military operation"). All my Ukrainian friends stayed and took up arms. Even the women. It was a brutal blitzkrieg style at that the beginning.

Most all of those in eastern Europe know very well what happens when Russia takes over: mass murder of families and non Russians. Recently Georgia went through this in Abkhazia, most of the towns simply wiped out.

Further back the baltics still have monuments to the folks rounded up and shot, the KGB rooms still having bullet holes in them.

The Russian government is far, far more brutal than the American mind can comprehend.