You understand that this isn’t a feud perpetuated by both sides.
There’s been a civil war tearing apart the Donbas since 2014.
I’ll spot you this, the comparison to the USSR in Afghanistan isn’t that far off. America is trying to do a second Operation Cyclone by standing up a hollowed out government and fundamentalist militia with enormous volumes of foreign military aid. The only difference is that its not 1979 anymore and we’re not simply unloading all our Vietnam era surplus onto some useful suckers.
Even in what is supposed to be an asymmetrical guerrilla war, westerners have somehow managed to make Ukraine more expensive for the western intelligence services than eastern traditional military.