There is a fairly large concensus among the citizens of Europe that those days are meant to be over.

This isn't a proxy war; it is a war between a hegemon which disagrees that those days are over, and a nation which aspires to join that concensus, but has the misfortune to have a long border with the aforesaid hegemon.

The danger for Europe is that letting the hegemon win the war sets a, to put it mildly, dangerous precedent.

I'm not a nationalist; international borders are largely arbitrary historical accidents; but allowing a hegemon to revise them by military conquest is ALWAYS a bad idea. Nevertheless, I hope that Ukraine will agree to a territorial settlement, because the war has to end.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}