Unlike a lot of parts of the internet and social media, FR isn't uniform in its opinions about the war in Ukraine. I think diversity of opinion is good and I don't want to shout anyone down because I disagree with them.
Ukraine lost a sizeable chunk of its territory (Crimea) to Russia in 2014 (while Russia was hosting the Olympics). Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine have been under occupation by Russian military forces and irregular militias sympathetic to Russia since that point as well. For some reason, America didn't see fit to send any weapons to Ukraine in all of those years, even though it was clear that the Russians had already invaded Ukraine. There were stern warnings, I'm sure letters were sent and diplomats demarched, but it was all amounting to nothing.
This year Russia decides to take another step into Ukraine. Now we are all gung ho about fighting the Russians. This is year eight of the invasion. What changed? Why the urgency now? Who benefits? Those are absolutely fair questions.
Compared to those years, I think the most glaring thing is that we're no longer wasting taxpayer dollars sending war materiel to Afghanistan, so the defense industrial welfare state needs a new tit to suckle from, and Ukraine just happens to be both willing and available. The Ukraine social media narratives are filled with fraudulent reporting and a lack of context, which benefits simps in the US and Western Europe who want to see more of their tax dollars getting thrown at a war that Ukraine cannot win on its own and that NATO countries are unwilling to join.
So what's left to do? Asymmetric war of attrition is the only thing Ukraine is promising. Slowly bleed Russia dry, except they've been saying that's what they were going to do from day one and that tactic only works if the Russian leadership is threatened by a populace weary of war. That's nowhere near happening. The war machine will never run out of other people's money to spend on weapons that will spill other peoples' blood. If the spigot were turned off, yes Russia would get its demands, but what's Ukraine's play for doing anything but surrendering more slowly and at a much steeper cost?
And how (and why) did Crimea cease to be part of Russia and become part of Ukraine?