How is this not a proxy war? The Ukrainian government is large funded by IMF loans and nearly all of the new military equipment comes from NATO. If that isn't a proxy war than there never never was one.

And frankly "..and a nation which aspires to join that consensus.." is ahistoric and completely removes meddling by one side from consideration. Do you deny that the first pro-Western Orange Revolution government was voted out of office, and I think our guy got something like sevenths place in that election? Or that the US was involved in the Maidan revolution to the point they got to pick the PM afterwards? And finally, Zelensky was voted in as the peace candidate with large majorities, but in the end was unable to implement any part of the ceasefire, at least to a large part because of the threat of violence be far-right elements.

And I certainly agree that the majority of Europeans would like to believe that that age is over, but what the majority of Europeans wants never mattered much when it came to matters of war.