aMorePerfectUnion commented as well, "Putin is flanked by hard liners who want to see toughness and victory. Zelensky is flanked by the globohomos who want to provoke war."
I think this all very apt. As the two schoolyard bullies rage, there is NO solution in taking sides with the smaller over the larger per se. The war between them will come one of three ways, if NATO does not screw Europe to WWIII.
As to the larger-smaller narrative, earlier the Ukraine against Donetsk civil war is an inversion of the storytelling, big versus little. Interesting how that is forgotten in the "fog of war." Options seem as follows: 1) Russia wins, and Ukraine surrenders. 2) Ukraine wins somehow, and Russia retreats. 3) A negotiation in earnest and in which both sides state some degree of satisfaction is concluded. I suspect the third is now well off the table, thanks to the US State Department and the Obama-Biden lust for their own "leadership."
I still remember the fifth grade teacher moralizing about bullying as wrong as it was aimed at me and others.
Later on the playground a mob of children later dragged the bullies around the playground creating a disturbance beyond the control of the playground monitors.
I felt like Rodney King in the middle of the LA riots in 1992.
“Can’t we all just get along”