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What you are implicitly arguing for is a return to great power "spheres of influence" which might have made sense in the 19th century era of world spanning European empires. But running foreign policy on the basis of great power spheres of influence is what got us WWI and WWII, which is why the US has rejected it as a doctrine since 1945.

Not true.

Our hands aren't clean here. We supported the coup of Ukraine's democratically-elected leader in 2014 because he was friendly to Russia and we've been provoking Russia with our NATO expansion and our military involvement with Ukraine.

Our government does this because our government does whatever it wants.

(And it gets away with it because millions of Americans simply refuse to believe that our government can do anything wrong.)

Yanukovych was a representative of the Donbas oligarchs closely aligned with Putin. When he vetoed the EU accession bill approved by Ukraine's parliament and tried to substitute one with Russia, thousands of Ukrainians revolted. They were helped by many Western NGOs and some by the US embassy, but it was a genuine popular movement, apart from the Donbas. Yanukovych arrested the previous President. He also severely weakened Ukraine's military on Putin's behalf.

He was Putin's chosen puppet, just as Biden is our Deep State chosen puppet. If tens of thousands had shown up on Jan 6 and refused to leave the Capitol as the Ukrainians did on Maidan, we'd be a lot better off today.