yea,

ukraine I'd say is being used as a pawn by US/NATO in a proxy war meant to disintegrate and balkanize former soviet nations. The ukrainian "goal" is NATO membership and yet NATO doesn't really want to let them join. They just used the threat of it to bait the Russians.

Russia also tried to join NATO several times and was similarly told no. US military strategy has long centered around giving money and weapons to fascist, traditionalist, religious, entrepreneurial groups. It is easier to divide and conquer other cultures when reactionaries are busy destabilizing their own nations. It is easier to subordinate periphery markets to core markets when their productive capacity is crippled by civil war.

I say "3 sides" + Russia because while NATO/US/Ukraine form a "bloc" here, each member of that "bloc" is less interested in being "against Russia" than for themselves. US has imperial hegemonic interests, and NATO members want "stability" in a region they consider their "back yard." Ukraine wants a bunch of things and has a bunch of groups of its own. Some of them want national sovereignty. Some of them want to be less of a satellite to Russia and more of a satellite to NATO. Some of them want total independence from the influence of any regional superpower which sadly isn't gonna happen. Some of them simply want to ethnically cleanse people on Donetsk and Luhask. It's a shitty situation. Just today you got Russian speaking people in Mariupol saying they were being used as human shields basically.