You might have to recalibrate much of your analysis with this thought: everything the Western Neo-Colonialists did was based on the threat of war, not on actual armed confrontation.

No matter what you think of their goals and methods, they are neither stupid nor insane. They knew well that Ukraine, even with the full aid of NATO, could not stand militarily against Russia. Russia sees this as an existential threat, so they are playing for all the marbles and will pursue to the very end. Don't be misled by their "delicacy", which is solely to minimize civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure. They have any hard feeling whatsoever towards the ordinary Ukrainian.

The war was over militarily within the first hour. The Ukrainian cause was easily determined to be hopeless by the end of the first day. So what we see uniformly since then is that it has turned into a "war" made up of terrorism, public relations, fakery, various grifts, and innumerable war crimes. That's the best they could salvage from a situation that they thought would never happen.