Missing from from much of the discourse on the war in Ukraine, either pro - "Western" or pro - Russia, is consideration that Eastern Europe, 200+ Million people depending on who is counted , is not just the land between the “West” and Russia; rather it is a dozen nations who are immediately threatened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and whose views should be considered and may take precedence over geopolitical Russia/China/US perspectives.
Treating Eastern Europe as a colony is not new. Candidate Gerald Ford said the quiet part out loud when he asserted there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe , as though the aspirations of the inhabitants of the region were inconsequential and even subordinate to Russia's imperial ambitions. The West's cavalier attitude toward Eastern European people was demonstrated in 1956 when we failed to halt Russia when it invaded Hungary and again in 1968 when Russian tanks rolled into Prague. The people of Eastern Europe are keenly aware of the threat of Russian aggression.
We ask "Do we really want to go to war over Ukraine" not because we don't want to go to war, apparently we would go to war over Mexico, but because Ukraine (or Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, etc.) don't really matter, they are the land in between and therefore expendable.
Apologists for the Russian invasion of Ukraine often raise the threat posed by NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. By that argument, Russia is responding to an existential threat in the same manner the US would respond if Russia invaded Mexico. Leaving aside the question of what are existential threats (neither threats nor in existence) and how nations should respond to them, the Mexico analogy has it backward. The invasion of Ukraine poses a real and immediate threat to the nations of Eastern Europe, all of whom have recent experience living under Russian domination. That is why they are eager to join NATO.
So when we hear about the War in Ukraine in terms of the US vs Russia or the West vs the Global South (is Russia South of Italy?), we should stop and consider that the nations of Eastern Europe are real and, most importantly, the citizens of Ukraine who are suffering under the lash of Russian aggression, are real. President Zelensky eloquently articulated the sentiment of all Eastern European peopleat the beginning of the war in three words: "I am here".